Reinvention, One Snack Bag at a Time: Insurance Exec-Turned Art Education Student Finds His Creative Path at Adelphi

Seven-year-old Briar drew a picture of her dad, Ryan Wosleger, due to receive his MA in 2026, for Father's Day in June. It depicts a bespectacled Ryan wearing a "Best Dad" T-shirt, a red superhero cape flowing behind him. The image is spot on. After all, the second-grader was her artist dad's first student.

The connection forged with Briar through art made Ryan wonder if he could take teaching beyond his kitchen table. But to do that, he knew he had to find a way to get an education from his kitchen table.

"I always had a decent way of explaining," Wosleger says of his 2023 epiphany. "I had the light bulb moment of thinking art and education would be a great path forward."

Now completing his second year in the online Master of Arts in Art Education program at the Adelphi University Ruth S. Ammon College of Education and Health Sciences, Wosleger has officially abandoned the life of assessing risk for insurance applicants by taking a risk of his own. He's halfway toward reinvention from insurance underwriter to art teacher.

"Ryan is a model student in our program," said Courtney Weida, EdD, professor and director of the MA in Art Education Program, "engaging deeply with parenting and art making."

The Decision to Chart a New Course

While art had always played a role in Wosleger's world, the Massapequa Park, New York, resident began to elevate its rank in the fall of 2021 when Briar was feeling homesick at nursery school. To cheer her up, Wosleger began drawing bubble letters, cartoons and whimsical creatures on the plain brown bags that held her daily snack. To his surprise, Briar started bringing the artsy sacks home, crumpled and crumb-filled, but cherished, nonetheless. As Briar's days brightened, the bags also began to fill the blank canvas of Wosleger's artistic potential.

"If my daughter didn't throw them out," Wosleger reasoned, "that meant something."

As Briar eagerly anticipated what magical design would materialize on the next bag, her dad began to question whether he was happy outside of his life as a father and husband. The grind of corporate America was weighing on him, and the daily drawings became Wosleger's refuge. Lifted by the reaction to his flourishes of personified fruit, dancing french fries, goofy dinosaurs and more, Wosleger publicly launched his art in September 2023 under the Instagram handle "@TheSnackBagDad."

Wosleger's story and his brown-bag artistry have captured the attention of the media. In the fall of 2025, he was featured in segments on Good Morning America and ABC 7 New York's Eyewitness News.

In addition to bridging home and school, the snack bags began to commemorate family milestones. When Ryan and his wife, Brittany, surprised Briar with tickets to Radio City Music Hall, her bag featured a Rockette. When the surprise was a trip to Disney World, Mickey Mouse and friends served as harbingers. And when Briar asked her dad how to draw the enchanted images, Wosleger's reinvention took further shape. Within a week of teaching her the crosshatching technique, the underside of finished art that suggests form, Briar began to grasp the skill.

The idea of a mid-career transition was familiar to Wosleger, whose mother became a math educator at age 38. But that didn't mean it wasn't scary. Pushing 40, Wosleger feared putting his family in financial jeopardy, but also recognized he had to make a change.

"What I was most scared of was, 'Will I leave a legacy? Will I leave this planet happy?'" he recalls.

Finding a Fit at Adelphi

With Brittany's support and his it's-never-too-late attitude, Wosleger discovered the online art education graduate program at Adelphi and assembled his portfolio. He soon embraced the flexible schedule, which allows him to balance his infant daughter's nap routine with completing his courses at a pace that makes sense for his family. His professors even reached out when Wosleger was in the hospital for his daughter Cambell's birth to offer congratulations-and extended deadlines.

"Adelphi," he says, "has given me the tools and the resources to push myself into the world of education."

Recently, Wosleger got his first taste of full-time teaching at Usdan Summer Camp for the Arts shortly after resigning from his insurance job in June. His newfound confidence has been transformational. As an undergraduate at Virginia Tech, Wosleger studied graphic design but convinced himself it wasn't a viable path. He's proud of the courage it took to finally trade his insurance cohort for Spider-Man, Moana and boba-drinking axolotls. This fall, Wosleger is completing his slate of online classes in preparation for his student teaching. And he's launched a series of "Art of SnackBagN" events at local libraries, where he shows children the basics of his craft.

Wosleger also has discovered a community of like-minded paper bag creatives. There's the husband-wife duo "@snackadelic," who introduced him to the group, and "@brownbagbrowndad," to whom Wosleger refers as the "Yoda of snack bag dads." That fellow artist reminded him what's at the heart of his artistic renaissance.

"He said, 'Focus on what's really meaningful-making your kids happy.'"