Cypress Survival Swim

Lisa Essner

Hello, my name is Lisa Essner; I am the owner of Cypress Survival Swim.  I have always had a love for the water. As a kid we had a pool in our backyard and I have loved swimming ever since.

I am the mother of two young children and I’ve spent the last 15 years of my career as a Respiratory Therapist in a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) at the biggest trauma center in Houston. I have dedicated my career to saving kids and babies’ lives.   I have seen children come into the PICU devastated as a result of drowning every year. Seeing this firsthand, I knew I wanted to do everything I could, to keep my kids safe from drowning. I placed them with an instructor from this program and had huge success! My children became such good swimmers at a very early age. We were able to go to the big pool and swim for hours! They were even able to go off the slides at the pool and swim back to the edge. At that time, my youngest was able to swim with these skills, she was 1.5 years old. I thought this program was amazing! I loved it! I thought to myself I could do this, but I was dedicated to my job at the hospital.

Then in the summer of 2017 the PICU saw 10 drownings in 3 weeks. I thought to myself, this is crazy and it was starting to affect me more than ever. That is when I started to look into becoming a survival swim instructor. I wanted to save children by preventing drownings, not after the drowning. I wanted to make a happy, positive difference in families’ lives. I wanted other families to have the fun summers and the extra layer of security that I am able to have with my children.