As his interests in the field grew, Stefan decided to further enhance his teaching skills by becoming a Red Cross certified Swim Instructor and a certified Lifeguard in 1993. Moving his way up the ranks teaching children and adults Stefan eventually became manager of the swim program for six years from 1999-2005. Stefan holds a Bachelors degree in Education as well as a Masters degree in Special Education. He is a certified school teacher in New York and South Carolina and has taught in the public education setting for eleven years.

In August of 2005 Stefan and his wife Meredith moved to Bluffton, South Carolina. Over time, Stefan noticed there was a lack of swim schools in the Bluffton/Hilton Head area that would measure up to his high standards. On March 6th, 2006 Island Swim became an officially licensed, Red Cross accredited swim school. The idea was simple: offer higher quality, more individually focused lessons than the competition to all ages and levels. Since then, Island Swim has reached two other milestone by becoming a nationally recognized swim school by the United States Swim School Association (USSSA) in February of 2008 and member of the National Drowning Prevention Alliance (NDPA) in January of 2012.

Stefan has always held true to the same philosophy: "Private/small group lessons are superior to large group lessons in that an individual student’s learning curve will be vastly accelerated.  My lessons focus on each student as an individual - not just another generic member in a group. Smaller groups also allow me to work at a more individual pace with each student thus keeping swimmers as close to their comfort zone as possible." This is why Island Swim has chosen to focus exclusively on private/individualized lessons not the "cookie cutter" large group approach.