Longtime aquatics manager and popular instructor Kelly Martinez has started her own consulting company.
Through her Phoenix-based company, called Kelly Martinez Speaks, she performs various types of training, including lifeguarding and lifeguarding standards, leadership training, emergency response, and swim instruction, among others.
The aquatic recreation coordinator with City of Phoenix Aquatics maintains that position full-time in addition to the new venture. She expects to work in her business full-time in the future.
An aquatics veteran of more than 30 years, Martinez has worked with the City of Phoenix for 17. In addition to holding various aquatics titles in different municipalities, Martinez was an elementary-school teacher for 10 years. She graduated from Western New Mexico University with a degree in Elementary Education.
Martinez has been presenting at various industry conferences since 2005. She additionally collaborates with Phoenix Aquatics Supervisor Becky Kirk on a YouTube channel. Called Lifeguards Love YouTube, it serves as a video library to supplement organizational or certification training. Many of the videos are meant to bring realism into training by addressing perceptional blindness, showing what drownings look like, and other things to help guards move past theory to reality.
Martinez is available to travel virtually anywhere in the U.S. and Canada so professionals and organizations can receive her best-practices training without having to attend larger or national conferences. “I’m hoping to fill that gap,” Martinez said.
She also is working to expand into Australia and New Zealand.
“There were a lot of things we did in the 1980s that everyone just did and nobody questioned,” Martinez said. “I see that we are still doing some of these things, and there are better ways. I think we get used to doing things a certain way. That’s my emphasis – exploring if we can do better and offering tips and tricks to improve.”