From Managing EDI To Swimming English Channel

From swimming in freezing waters in the pitch black to a looming attempt to cross the English Channel, for Zoe Kennedy, swimming is more than a hobby.

As the Senior CEDI Manager in our Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN), she makes sure that inclusion is at the heart of the faculty's practise.

Outside of King's, she marries her passion for the water with her work, as she volunteers for WeSwim, a charity helping disabled people access swimming, delivering physical, social, and mental health benefits to both swimmers and volunteers.

And she is now planning to raise money for them by swimming across the English Channel - the world's busiest shipping lane - a feat that is likely to take her around 15 hours and achieved by less people than have climbed Mount Everest.

The road to the Channel

Swimming has been a part of Zoe's life for as long as she can remember, throughout school and university, before falling to the wayside in her early adulthood.

It wasn't until around the time of the pandemic, she started taking it more seriously again: "Just before COVID I started swimming more. I'd lived in the UK for a few years, and I thought 'How am I going to get through another UK winter?" and thought swimming would help. During COVID, it became a lifeline, helping me to manage the stress and uncertainty of everything."

When she could, she took weekend trips with friends or joined groups to take part in wild swims around the country. She swam Lake Bled in Slovenia and later, Lake Ullswater. It was here in the Lake District, that the idea of swimming the Channel started to become real.

"There was another guy in the session who was training to swim the Channel, and I was keeping up with him. I thought that if I could match his speed in the pool then maybe it would be doable for me too."

Testing the waters, she signed up for a Channel relay. Her first swim began at 2am, "It was absolutely pitch black. The water was about 16 or 17 degrees. I could see nothing but a fog light on a boat that I was meant to be following, and I was overcome with the thought "I'm coming back to do the whole thing".

At its narrowest, the English Channel is about 34km wide (21 miles), but swimmers usually travel further due to the tide. The crossing typically takes about 10 to 18 hours.

In preparation for the full length, she swims regularly at her local lido, which is unheated. Zoe finds that focusing on the journey ahead in cool waters is the perfect reprieve from a busy life: "If I know I've got a super busy day, I'm getting up early to go before work or I plan to go there after work. There's something about the rhythmic breathing and the way cold water just wipes everything away. Recently, I did two kilometres in the Lido, it was 13 degrees, and the moment your head hits the water, you can't think about anything else."

These days, Zoe is swimming 12 to 14km a week, which is about 280 lengths of an Olympic-sized swimming pool. She's slowly building up to 20km (400 lengths) and will soon be heading to a swim camp in Croatia where she's expecting to do 40km (800 lengths). She's got 88km of events coming up over the summer including swimming Lake Windermere in September, the longest lake in England at 17.5km. She'll also be testing her mental resilience in night swims.

Supporting WeSwim

Zoe is crossing the Channel in aid of WeSwim, a charity that helps people with disabilities, who are twice as likely to be inactive, to access swimming in London. "I know the joy of being in the water, and I wanted to give that to other people… The freedom that our swimmers get from being in the pool after perhaps being in a wheelchair all day, experiencing mobility restrictions or being excluded from society , you can see how much stronger they get mentally and physically."

Zoe's uses her Service Time to dedicate time to support WeSwim and has facilitated them being added to King's Volunteering platform. Service Time allows for King's colleagues to use up to 21 hours per year to volunteer for a charity. She's focusing on establishing a new club in the WeSwim network. "It brings me so much pride and joy to see our new volunteers gaining skills alongside our swimmers having the space to be themselves … They always have the biggest smiles when they achieve something new." The £15,000 she's hoping to raise will help the charity significantly with their running costs and provide even more opportunities for people to swim.

Leading EDI in IoPPN

When working in rural water market regulation in her homeland Australia, Zoe got the feeling that it wasn't the right place for her. "It was interesting stuff. But it perhaps just wasn't quite as aligned with my values and what I wanted to see changed in the world." It was then that Zoe made the move to the UK, and began working for a women's charity in London, before beginning her career at King's nine years ago.

As Senior CEDI manager in IoPPN, her role is busy and varied. Over the years, she has focused on improving the governance and prominence of EDI in the faculty, including leading on the faculty's Silver Athena Swan Award for the second time: "We delivered the programme in about three months, when it's typically done in 18 months or two years."

Zoe credits her happiness in the faculty to the leadership: "They've been really positive and encouraging of my EDI work and supportive of me trialling different and creative approaches."

Crossing the Channel

Her swim is set for August 2027 during a weather window, but she won't know the exact date until the night before to make sure the conditions are best to get across.

For it to be an officially ratified swim, she won't be wearing a wetsuit. And as a vegetarian, she won't be covering herself in goose fat, as swimmers traditionally have done. Food will be thrown to her from a boat, but she won't take breaks.

But for now, she's not worrying about logistics, which she's entrusted to her coach. She's solely focused on going the distance.