About Katie

My name is Katie Jennings. I grew up in Virginia and have lived here most of my life. After spending a few years overseas in South Africa, I returned to the Richmond area and I began working at an engineering company for several years. During this time, my husband and I had 5 kids (4 girls and 1 boy).

I had grown up a competitive swimmer and spent time around water my entire life. Once having kids, I made an effort to not go near the water or pools. However, this didn’t stop a traumatic accident from happening to my second born daughter, Nora. In the summer of 2020, at the age of 2, she made her way to our friend’s unoccupied, new above ground pool, which was not connected to the deck in any form. Nora was pulled from the water where CPR continued until paramedics got her heartbeat back 12 minutes later. She spent the next 17 days at our local children’s hospital with 5 of those days on life support and in a medically induced coma. She ended up making a full recovery.

Since Nora’s accident, I learned of self-rescue swim and immediately contacted Judy at Infant Aquatics. Judy put me in contact with our local instructor, and I've made sure all my kids got lessons. Since watching the lessons, it has become my dream to change careers and help make sure no family experiences what we did, or worse.

I chose Infant Aquatics because every person within the company that I spoke to was so quick in responding, and I could tell they really knew their stuff. The training my children got in the water to not only self rescue but also become good swimmers was better than anything I’ve ever seen. I knew my training would also be second to none, and it has proven to be so. With 6 weeks of hands-on, 1-on-1 lessons with Erin at Starfish Infant Aquatics, I’ve learned more than I thought imaginable.

Since Nora’s accident I have been a water safety and drowning prevention advocate. I am so excited to now also teach children how to self rescue as a part of the Infant Aquatics team.