Adam Joel Weitsman is an American entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is the owner and Chief Executive Officer of Upstate Shredding - Weitsman Recycling.
Early life
Weitsman was born and raised in Owego, NY. Weitsman developed an interest in art collecting early in life after his father and grandfather discovered two early American stoneware bottles during an excavation project in their scrap yard in 1980. Weitsman began collecting the 19th-century stoneware and owned 60 pieces by 1982. In 1986, Weitsman graduated from Owego Free Academy. Weitsman majored in banking at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University in Brookville. In 1989, Weitsman worked at a Manhattan art gallery, Hirschl & Adler Folk, and opened the American Folk Art Gallery in Greenwich Village in 1991. In 1995, Weitsman became vice president of Ben Weitsman & Son, a scrap processing company owned by his family before eventually purchasing it from his father.
Career
In 1997, Weitsman opened Upstate Shredding at the Tioga County Industrial Park in Owego, NY. In 2005, Weitsman acquired Upstate Shredding’s sister company, Ben Weitsman & Son, Inc., after his father retired. In December 2009, Weitsman acquired an 11-acre scrapyard in Solvay, NY from Peter Matlow. In March 2010, Upstate Shredding won Tioga County’s Business of the Year award. Between 2012 and 2016, Weitsman acquired a scrap yard in New Castle, PA, a port facility in Albany, and Empire Recycling in Watertown, NY. By the end of 2016, they were collectively known as Upstate Shredding - Weitsman Recycling. That year, Weitsman won the Platts Industry Leadership Award and the AMM Scrap Company of the Year award for the second year in a row. In May 2018, a U.S. District Judge found a former Upstate Shredding - Weitsman Recycling employee guilty of defamation. The former employee had spread false claims about Weitsman online and was ordered to stop. Weitsman and his wife, Kim Weitsman, have invested in real estate in Skaneateles. In 2010, Kim purchased the Krebs restaurant, which was founded in 1899. The restaurant re-opened in the summer of 2014. In 2018, Weitsman began construction on a Mexican restaurant, Elephant and the Dove, in addition to development of a sushi bar in Owego, NY.
Philanthropy
Weitsman supports his local philanthropic efforts through personal funding and his restaurant, The Krebs, which he and his wife purchased in 2010. In 2015, Weitsman and his wife donated the restaurant's profits to 16 regional nonprofit organizations. Since 1998, Weitsman has been donating his collection of 19th-century American stoneware to the New York State Museum in Albany. In January 2019, Weitsman donated $175,000 to four Boys & Girls Clubs in Owego, Binghamton, Syracuse, and Endicott, after promising on social media that he would make the donation if Syracuse Orange were to beat Duke Blue Devils in a men's collegiate basketball game played on January 14. In 2019, Weitsman donated $100,000 for the renovation and expansion of the Rescue Mission’s Clarence L. Jordan Food Service and Culinary Education Center. In 2020, Weitsman donated $10,000 to Peter Coleman’s campaign to raise money to fight childhood cancer. In 2020, Weitsman donated $2,500 to a program within the Tioga County Probation Department called, “Decision Points”. This program is designed to encourage at-risk youth to make better life choices. In 2020, Weitsman offered a college campus he acquired to any federal, state, or local government agency to set up a base camp to help find a cure for the Coronavirus.
Personal life
Weitsman met his wife, Kim Weitsman in the summer of 2000. In 2004, DeFrance left her modeling career to work alongside Weitsman as an operations manager for Upstate Shredding. They married in June 2006 in Skaneateles, NY.
