Interests

Adam began playing guitar as a young boy, learning fingerpicking from his father — working through pieces like "Blackbird" and developing an early appreciation for the acoustic guitar's expressive range.

During graduate school at Purdue University, he became more serious about the instrument, dedicating real time to technique and repertoire. His time at the University at Buffalo deepened his influences further — attending Ani DiFranco concerts there introduced him to her distinctive slap-picking style, which left a lasting mark on his playing.

More recently, Adam has focused on emulating the acoustic work of contemporary artists, always returning to the fundamentals his father first taught him.

Growing up in Rochester, sailing on Lake Ontario was a frequent pastime. The water was always close — part of the texture of everyday life in a lakeside city.

After college and graduate school, Adam reconnected with sailing and met his wife Renee, who shared his enthusiasm for the water. Together they purchased their first boat while living near Washington, DC, keeping it on the Western Shore of the Chesapeake Bay and visiting most weekends to enjoy the water and wind.

A pivotal trip to the British Virgin Islands in December 2000 confirmed that their passion for sailing was enduring. The experience convinced them to upgrade to a larger vessel and commit to the life more fully.

WingFoiling is one of the fastest-growing water sports in the world — and once you experience it, it's easy to understand why.

The sport combines three elements: a hydrofoil mounted beneath a surfboard-style board, and a handheld inflatable wing that the rider uses to harness wind power. The hydrofoil — a mast with wing-shaped blades attached — works on the same principles as an aircraft wing. As the board gains speed, the foil generates lift, and the board rises entirely out of the water. What's left is a sensation that defies easy description: silent, smooth flight, skimming above the surface with almost no friction, the chop and turbulence of the water beneath you simply disappearing.

Riders who have snowboarded often note the uncanny similarity in stance and body mechanics — the same edge-to-edge weight shifts, the same intuitive lean into a turn. WingFoiling on a good day has been compared to riding five feet of fresh powder, with that same floaty, frictionless feeling of pure momentum. The difference, of course, is that when you fall, you land in water.

Adam came to WingFoiling in September 2021, a natural progression from the windsurfing he had pursued in the mid-2000s. The wind-reading instincts and board feel he had developed years earlier translated surprisingly well to the new sport, shortening the learning curve that humbles most beginners.

Four full seasons in, Adam has reached a solid intermediate level — completing gybe turns and riding small waves on the foil. Each session on the water is a reminder of why the sport is so addictive: the moment of liftoff never gets old.

What makes the Rochester WingFoiling scene particularly special is the community. Like surfing, the sport attracts a certain kind of person — adventurous, generous with knowledge, and genuinely stoked to see others progress. The local riders have that same easy camaraderie you find in surf culture: experienced foilers helping beginners troubleshoot gear, impromptu sessions that turn into long afternoons on the water, and a group chat that lights up whenever the wind forecast looks promising.

Depending on wind direction, the group chases conditions across the region — Lake Ontario in Rochester, Lake Erie in Buffalo, and the Finger Lakes, particularly Canandaigua and Seneca, based on the wind direction and velocity. It's a sport that makes you a student of the wind in a way few others do, is physically demanding and has a community of fellow obsessives to share that with makes any time at the beach fun.

Technology has been a through-line across Adam's entire adult life — not as an abstraction, but as something he has built with, argued about, and lived inside of.

He came of age professionally just as the Internet was reshaping everything. In his twenties, he wasn't watching that transformation from the sidelines — he was on the front lines, embracing the shift and building into it. That instinct to engage rather than observe has defined his relationship with technology ever since. He has developed the software behind two businesses himself, approaching each as a problem of design and systems thinking as much as engineering.

At its core, Adam views technology as a tool — powerful, neutral, and entirely dependent on the intentions of the people wielding it. This perspective is shaped in part by a deep fascination with physics. He sees technology not as something separate from the natural world but as its practical expression — the intersection of physical principles and everyday life. The same curiosity that draws him to the mechanics of a hydrofoil lifting off water informs how he thinks about software architecture, automation, and artificial intelligence.

The expanding frontier of what's possible genuinely excites him. Smart home automation, driverless vehicles, and the rapid evolution of AI are not passing interests but areas he follows closely and thinks about seriously — both for their personal implications and their potential to reshape industries and communities. The pattern he sees is consistent: the most transformative technologies don't just change what we do, they change how we relate to each other and to the world around us.

The Adirondack Mountains are not just a place Adam visits — they are a place he is from, in every sense that matters.

It began at nine years old, when he first attended summer camp in the Adirondacks, returning year after year through his teenage years. But the deeper roots came through his family's camp, a storied property called Camp Uncas, where the Stetzers gathered every Christmas for decades and returned each summer. It was at Camp Uncas that Adam got engaged, and where he and Renee were married — the mountains bearing witness to the moments that defined his adult life.

As the family grew, so did the tradition. His children spent their formative years making the same memories he had, and when the family camp moved to Big Wolf Lake near Tupper Lake, a new chapter began. The Moorings, their camp on Big Wolf Lake, is now the center of gravity for summers and Christmases alike — a place where time slows down and what matters comes back into focus. The families they have come to know on the lake have become some of their closest friends, people they travel with and lean on, bonds forged across seasons and years. The multi-generational dimension of that life has become something Adam treasures with particular depth, especially since the loss of his mother in 2023.

On the water and in the mountains, Adam finds what urban life cannot offer. He hikes the high peaks, swims, sails, and wingfoils on the lake. Among the trees, mountains, water, and wind there is a quality of peace that is hard to name but impossible to mistake — the feeling of being exactly where you are supposed to be. The Adirondacks have given his family a shared language, a set of rituals, and a place to return to.