Level Water Core Staff

Ian Thwaites
CEO

Lucy Powell
Operations Director

Matt Hughes-Short

Head of Programmes

Andy Punter
Fundraising Director

Katie Ashworth
Event Manager

Andy Walker
Training and Excellence Manager

Ashleigh Scott
Programmes Officer

Ben Hickson
Events Assistant

Jasmin Yeo

Fundraising Coordinator

Core Staff Bios

  • Ian is our Founder and CEO. 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 face, Ian believed we could change the system. Before Level Water, Ian studied Sports Science then Marketing, started his career in Investment Banking, and went on to become a Senior Advisor at The Foundation (one of the UK's first Innovation consultancies) and European Director of Decode (a global youth strategy consultancy). He swam competitively, at best placing 5th in the country, and went on to compete in triathlon, where he came second at the World Age Group Championships in Beijing.

  • Lucy is our Operations Director. She started her career as a Project Manager from school, and has over 15 years of experience leading global projects across a wide-range of both private and public sector organisations (with a brief 6 week stint as a Met Police Officer!). Previous to Level Water, Lucy was the Business Planning and Operations Director at the International NGO Girl Effect (previously the Nike Foundation), where she also led the TEGA program, a tech-enabled, girl-centered insights method embedded into hard-to-reach communities across Africa and Asia. Lucy has always had a passion for sports and the sense of community that it brings to people from all different backgrounds and walks of life. Lucy currently works across a number of different ad-hoc freelance projects within the UK and further afield, and is a proud Samaritans Listening Volunteer. Lucy has hosted a number of music gigs in aid of the mental health charity Mind and is also a keen runner and painter.

  • Andy is our Fundraising Director and joins Level Water with 15 years of experience in the charity sector, including time at Cancer Research UK where he led high performing teams across Community, Events, Corporate and Legacy Fundraising. Most recently, Andy has been running More Human, a tech-for-good company that helps community organisers get people together easily. 

    Outside of work, Andy is a runner and writer, and splits his time between plodding around on the trails and scribbling down half-formed ideas that may or may not see the light of day. He lives in rural Devon with his family and Toby, a charming (and occasionally naughty) Labrador. He's a firm believer that time outdoors, moving your body, and a good dog are the foundations of clear thinking.

  • Matt is a programme leader and behavioural science practitioner with over a decade of experience designing and delivering inclusive health and sport initiatives.

    Before joining Level Water, Matt led national work at Alzheimer’s Society, partnering with organisations including The FA, Premier League and British Airways to improve accessibility and inclusion for people living with dementia. His work has influenced practice across the UK and reached the public through major campaigns, training programmes and high-profile activations.

    Matt specialises in behaviour change, co-design and partnership working, with a strong focus on reducing inequalities and creating environments where everyone feels able to take part. He is passionate about the role of sport in building confidence, connection and lifelong wellbeing, particularly for people with disabilities and long-term health conditions.

    Outside of work, he is an endurance athlete, representing Great Britain in obstacle course racing. Matt is also an actor, treading the boards at several theatres across Hertfordshire, alongside directing the Company of Teens youth group in St Albans.

  • Andy is our Training and Excellence Manager and works on the programmes team with Matt. Andy has more than 25 years of experience working within aquatics and is a qualified teacher/coach in every aquatic discipline (except Diving). He is a qualified Swim England & STA tutor and delivers Level 1 & 2 teacher courses & CPD’s for Swim Wales in his free time to help develop the teachers of the future. Andy’s first interaction with Level Water was when he met with Ian in 2015 and signed a partnership with us to provide our supported lessons at the 5 pools he had responsibility for in his role as Swimming Development Officer in Bridgend. With Andy’s support the partnership quickly grew to become one of the biggest we had at that time. In 2017 he was selected to train to be one of our tutors to deliver our specialist training to teachers before they start to deliver our supported lessons.

    Andy joined Level Water in the summer of 2021 and has been instrumental in helping us go from less than 200 supported swimmers across 40 pools to nearly 1,000 swimmers across 170 pools. He has negotiated and agreed partnership agreements with many of the pools we work with today and has facilitated Level Water training for over 1,000 teachers across the UK (delivering around half of that number personally).

    Andy was a competitive swimmer from the age of 8, going on to compete at regional & national level and still attends (Level Water commitments allowing) 2 early morning training sessions a week with his local Swim Wales regional performance centre. Although he no longer competes, he still swims as no other sport can replicate how great he feels after a swim session and his club fees help to support the programme to allow children & young people to achieve their potential.

    Andy is passionate about every child having the opportunity to learn to swim as he has benefited massively, both personally and professionally, from the opportunities he has been afforded. With his experience as a Swim Teacher, Swimming Development Officer and Aquatics Manager he knows that standard group lessons are not suitable to meet the needs of many children with SEND and as a result many of the children that Level Water supports would simply not have the opportunity to learn to swim without our support.

  • Ashleigh is our Programme Officer, she is a life-long swimmer and started her swimming career as a volunteer coach in her local swimming club. Ashleigh has over 20 years of experience as a swimming teacher in a range of settings, including teaching adults, swimmers with SEND and children excluded from mainstream education. Ashleigh is also a tutor for Swim England.

    Prior to Level Water, Ashleigh managed the award-winning Deaf-Friendly Swimming Project on behalf of the National Deaf Children’s Society. The four-year Sport England funded project resulted in children accessing deaf-friendly swimming lessons nationwide and hundreds of swimming teachers receiving deaf-awareness training, Ashleigh has achieved BSL Level 3. Ashleigh also spent six years working for the England and Wales Cricket Board as a Safeguarding Advisor.

    Ashleigh lives in Birmingham and one of her proudest moments was performing in the Opening Ceremony of the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games.

  • Ben is our Event Operations Assistant, with a diverse background in events that has taken him as far and wide as Mexico and Guatemala, he brings a unique outlook to the team and a drive to make sure everything runs as it should on event day and beyond!

    Ben excels at being in the midst of event logistics, ensuring everything runs like clockwork whilst supporting the swimmers and the team around him. Coming from a background in wedding and corporate event execution he thrives in a fast-paced work environment that keeps him on his toes. 

    Ben holds a degree in Criminology from the University of Kent and has a passion for everything outdoors including trekking, scuba diving and of course, wild swimming. Charity has been a cornerstone of Ben's life throughout his childhood and adolescence so being part of such a special team means a great deal to him. 

  • Jasmin is our Fundraising Coordinator. She joins Level Water after spending the last 6 years working in architecture where she’s delivered award winning, community focused projects for the charity and public sector.

    At Level Water, Jasmin translates her dedication to meaningful community building to design our supporter journey, helping our fundraisers to feel confident and empowered whilst being a friendly face every step of the way!

    Endlessly curious, thoughtful and excited by life, if you don’t find Jasmin down the pool you’ll find her running, getting to grips with the open water or out on the trails. Jasmin learnt to swim later in life after a negative experience with swimming lessons as a child. Two-decades later she faced her fears, equipped with a new pair of prescription goggles and a bunch of adult swimming lessons! Disability is also central to Jasmin’s family life, so the Level Water Mission is one close to her heart.

Level Water Inclusion Specialists

  • Hi, I'm Josh. I'm a Level Water Inclusion Coordinator with Everyone Active in Bristol. I grew up swimming all the time, as my mum was a swimming teacher. I myself have been a swimming teacher for around 10 years, and I have a recent background of working in a SEND setting in Further Education.  I absolutely love teaching people to swim. I see it as a life skill, and an activity that everyone can benefit hugely from participating in. I'm thrilled to be involved with Level Water, because I believe wholeheartedly in the goal of making swimming as accessible as possible for everyone, regardless of our differences.

  • I have always loved being in water even at a young age. I used to train with a swimming club but was never good enough to compete, so as a teenager I started to help with the clubs in house learn to swim classes. This is where my passion for making a difference really started.

    At 14 I worked as a lifeguard for a physiotherapist who delivered swim therapy for families with children with additional needs, these not only helped with the children being able to do more of the stretches needed to support their bodies development but also had amazing mental health benefits to.

    I continued to work in leisure as a Lifeguard whilst studying Business Administration and Mathematics at Keele university. After Uni, I had the chance to train as a swim teacher and grasped it with both hands. Once qualified I mixed my work life up and juggled between lifeguarding and swim teaching.

    It wasn’t until having my second child in 2013 that I changed to teaching as a main role. In this time within group lessons and by delivering 1 to 1’s I have delivered classes to a diverse range of children. Being able to make a difference to adults and children that thought they would never be able to swim has always been the most rewarding part of the role for me.

    With both my children, now older, I had the opportunity to change my career, I love teaching but wanted a new challenge and to get back to where I first began but now with a greater understanding of how to engage, support and communicate. I started this role on June 24 and have loved every minute since.

  • I have been working in the Leisure Industry and teaching Swimming for 21 years. 16 of those have included teaching swimmers with disabilities. Through my experiences within the Leisure Industry I have had the pleasure of seeing many people with disabilities be able to access the water due to the lessons they have taken part in and the work that has been carried out to make Swimming Pools more accessible. As well as teaching Swimming I am also a Swimming, Open Water Swimming, Diving and Trampolining Coach. In all these disciplines I have worked with people with varying ability levels and have had successes in seeing children and adults improve in both skill level and confidence. 

    Allowing sporting sessions to be inclusive is a passion of mine and is reflected in the role of Level Water Inclusion Specialist that I have recently taken on. I aim to encourage as many Swimming Teachers and Coaches as possible to educate themselves in how to make sessions inclusive and am in the fortunate position as a Swim England, STA and Level Water Tutor that I can educate the new and current Swimming Teachers in how to do so. I believe you never stop learning and take as much from the lessons and training I deliver as I put in to it. It is amazing what people can achieve and share when they are given the opportunity to do so. 

  • I have been a swimmer from birth, always feeling a deep connection to the water and to swimming, I particularly enjoy open water sports and sea swimming. Although I never got the opportunity to compete in swimming as a sport, swimming for me has always been about fun, connection and family as well as a life skill. 

    I have a background in the NHS as a healthcare support worker, particularly working with adults and children with additional needs, leaving the NHS to become a swim teacher.  I have been teaching swimming for almost 3 years, and I have had amazing opportunities to work with national champions, teaching in renowned swim schools in London and to teach at the Olympic pool in the London Aquatic Centre, which is where I teach currently. Now I am exclusively working with Level Water children, as well as working part-time as a Yoga teacher! 

    I hope to bring out the best ability in each child I teach, teaching without expectation but also without limitation. My goal is to teach children how to safely navigate the water as well as providing them with the tools to swim as independently as possible. I want all of my student swimmers to feel like a swimming pool is a place where they can go to participate in a fun activity just like everyone else.

  • My journey as a swimming teacher began at 15, when my coach encouraged me to qualify as a Level 1, followed by Level 2. The pool quickly became my second home as I began teaching learners alongside my own training. I soon became involved with teaching and coaching club swimmers with a range of disabilities who were preparing for competition. Training camps I had once attended as a swimmer became events I supported as a staff member. It was incredibly rewarding to witness swimmers’ progress, not only in their technique, but also in their confidence and overall psychosocial development. 


    In early 2020, my coach founded a new disability-focused club, and I moved with her to help build that vision. Not long after, I moved to Scotland for university but continued to teach whenever I was back home for the holidays. I also took on the role of Vice Chair, supporting the operational delivery of club activities. Away from the pool, I assumed various other roles, both paid and voluntary, focused on widening access to education and wellbeing support for children and young people.


    I joined Level Water in summer 2025, shortly after graduating. Delivering the charity's mission in the city where I grew up is incredibly meaningful. The role comes with challenges, but I look forward to facing them, supported by an amazing team and excellent training opportunities. I hope to continue learning and growing — not only as a teacher and professional, but also as an individual — whilst contributing to a more inclusive future where every child can benefit from access to swimming.