Ian Thwaites

Ian founded Level Water in 2012. He started the charity after the London Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012. He believes sport helps children to learn a lot of skills that will help them throughout life, and wanted to help more children have positive sporting experiences. After seeing the injustices that disabled children faced in learning how to swim, which is a life-saving skill, Ian believed we could change the system.

Twelve years ago, before Ian started the charity, disabled children could either try to learn to swim in mainstream groups, or they could pay 3x as much for a one-to-one lesson with an untrained teacher. Since 2012, Ian has scaled the charity to work in 150 locations across England and Wales, has guided the charity through multiple growth stages and setbacks such as COVID-19. He continues to lead the charity boldly into deploying new innovations that aims to reach significant impact growth over the next three years.

With both Ian's leadership and the experienced team that he has brought together, Level Water could be in a position to ensure that inclusion is thoroughly and meaningfully embedded into swimming pool culture across the UK within the next ten years.