Hi! I'm Daniela, the creator of Wild Waters. I'm a swimmer by training and an explorer at heart. My goal is to create tools and resources that help people have fun and stay safe in and around the water.  

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In middle and high school, I trained as long distance pool swimmer, racing the 500 and mile freestyle. Between injuries and being nervous about swimming at the college level, I elected to quit swimming at the end of high school.  I felt like something was missing for 4 years, so I returned to the pool, training with a YMCA triathlon team for a year.  I moved to Boston, MA, where I met a few swimmers who trained and raced open water events. I swore to myself I'd never become one of those weirdos, covered in algae and smelling funky... and then I swam my first open water race in the Northeast Kingdom (Phil White's 10k Kingdom Swim).  I fell in love with open water and started intense training to compete in swim events throughout the US.  Since 2015, I've completed 10 OWS events and 1 solo crossing. It took a few years, but I came to realize that I had a love-hate relationship with swimming that involved cycles of intensely training for races, swimming the events, and then falling off the rails and taking very long breaks from swimming.  In 2018, after my solo crossing of Lake Memphremagog, I felt lost and didn't know how to get back to loving swimming after training so hard to complete the crossing. 

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I've been swimming since I was a little kid, but it took me almost 30 years to figure out the concept of wild swimming.  The journey from extremely competitive pool swimming to triathlon training to burning out from open water racing led me to discover pleasure in 2 things: 

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1. Faffing (the art of delaying entry into a body of water by fussing with equipment, complaining about the water temp, trying to convince everyone to abandon in exchange for hot coca)

2. Adventure swimming (swimming to get to a destination that may not be accessible with other forms of transport, swimming in new places)

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Now, I prefer to tell people I love wild swimming.  I want to swim to spots where I can float around to look for turtles. I want to swim across the river to climb out and hike from the other side.  I want to see the lake from the middle, not worry about swimming 2 loops of the perimeter in a certain time limit.  I want to swim free, adventure, and explore.  

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I hope that others discover (or re-discover) joy of being in and around the water.  My goal in founding Wild Waters is to bring new products to swim adventurers across the world. I also aim to increase inclusivity into open water, especially for the LGBTQIA+ community.