Adam Peters Brings a Championship Mentality to Lee Group Search

Walk into Adam Peters’ office at Lee Group Search and it’s obvious.

Sports rule.

His golf clubs are in one corner. A Wheaties box commemorating the Cincinnati Reds 1990 World Series victory sits among the baseball memorabilia alongside trade publications on the plastics industry. Right next to the Best Dad Ever photo cube on his desk is his mini Michigan football helmet.

Adam is a Wolverine at heart who graduated from Christopher Newport University.

In fact, he’s a Michigan football diehard. That’s absolutely outrageous when home is “The” Ohio State University country — a region so serious about the heated college football rivalry that M’s are crossed out everywhere around the state during Beat Xichigan week.

“Every member of my family roots for Ohio State,” Adam says, who hails from Van Wert, Ohio.

Not Adam, who’s hearing crickets from those folks these days with Michigan snagging the last two in the series. He’s an uninhibited guy certainly cognizant of how others think but confident enough to make his own way.

That’s why the former college tennis player preferred singles to doubles where it’s up to you and only you on  the court to figure it out. It’s a mentality that works well at Lee Group Search, his employment home for the last eight years. The Executive Search Consultant specializes in partnering with packaging, plastics and consumer goods companies nationwide to find the talent they need to grow and scale their businesses.

“I love the team aspect here,” Adam says. “At the end of the day, your success is based off of you and your performance. I feel part of a team, but I like the independent part of the job, too.”

Adam didn’t have a playbook for what life would look like as a college student at Christopher Newport. The Bethel High graduate who moved to Hampton with his parents at age 9 starred on the Division III tennis team, where his speed and dropshots earned him several spots in the CNU record book, including a .864 winning percentage his freshman year.

“I never knew in college want I wanted to do,” says Adam, who earned his undergraduate degree in communication and media studies. “I knew I liked to have fun and hang out with my friends but there never was a free pass in my family. I started working when I was 16.”

Back then, Adam was a lifeguard. After graduation, he signed on with a cellular phone company where he ended up leading the sales team. Later, he transitioned into car sales but never felt he had found a sustainable career path.

That’s why he reached out to his buddy Wes Ashworth, a friend from his first job at the cellular company, that was now working as an Executive Search Consultant at Lee Group Search.

“You’d make a really good recruiter,” Wes told Adam.

“A few months later, I got hired here,” Adam says. “I found a career that combined a lot of what I was doing in my former jobs — business development, marketing and customer service.”

Wes isn’t only a peer to Adam. They’re best friends who share a lighthearted banter that keeps things relaxed around an office where Adam thinks nothing of wheeling his chair into Wes’ office while he’s sitting in it. Then there’s Adam’s nameplate: ADAM “YOU KNOW” PETERS.

His colleagues kid him for saying “you know” on the phone, where his personable and engaging manner make him an instantly likable guy.

Adam and Wes are neighbors in the Hampton golf cart community of Grandview Island, where their families regularly hang together on weekends. Adam and his wife, Shannon, are parents to four — Noah, Zach, Bridgette and Jules.

Wes and Adam are teammates outside of work, too, spades partners in hotly contested card games between them and their wives.

“We keep track of our scores, and I can happily say after this past weekend, Wes and I are winning by five games,” Adam boasts. “The wives are really sulking right now.”

If Adam could be anywhere, he’d choose outdoors, though during NFL Sundays he’s a glutton for football. Only thinking about this season, he’s a little bummed that he won’t have the 199^th pick of the 2000 draft to cheer on.

That would be former Michigan quarterback Tom Brady, the five-time Super Bowl MVP, who retired for the second time after the 2022 season. Adam is hoping for one more comeback, another year to see “my favorite player of all time.”

Adam’s still a Wolverine and always will be.