Executive Director
The Council for the Model Aquatic Health Code
It was a homecoming of sorts in 2019, when Kristie Riester joined the Council for the Model Aquatic Health Code (CMAHC) as its executive director.
It seems multiple loves and vocations of hers had merged.
Riester had become part of the aquatics community in college, as she studied pre-med at University of Arizona in Tucson. But she had to do some scheming to get the job she wanted.
“Of course, everybody wanted the lifeguarding job, so they were really hard to get,” she says. “To get my foot in the door, I taught water aerobics when I first got to U of A.”
Once her managers witnessed her work ethic in action, they promoted her to aquatics supervisor in addition to her duties as a fitness instructor. She trained lifeguards, became an instructor trainer, coached swimming and taught lessons. She’d also had the opportunity to guest lecture at other universities.
As she gained an affinity for the water and realized she loved to teach, she also had a change of heart regarding the pursuit of medicine.
“I was nearing graduation, totally panicking, thinking, ‘The next step is medical school. Now what?’ I had all these part-time jobs on campus, but I needed a job,” Riester says. “I realized that aquatics is a career. That’s when I shifted.”
Her future brother-in-law gave her a lead to an aquatics manager position, and she got it. “That really set my trajectory in the field,” Riester says.
After eight years at that post, she started to slowly drift away from aquatics. She gained a masters in public administration from Northern Arizona University. She became a parks and recreation director for the City of El Centro, Calif. After having a baby, she and her husband decided to move back to Arizona to be near family. There, she became community services director for the City of Maricopa.
While attending an executive retreat, she had an about-face. “I went up to [the facilitator] and said, ‘I want to do what you do. This is amazing.’”
With that she started a brand-new career, opening her own business for consulting, facilitation, team building, and customer-service training, among other things.
On this new path, she found her way to the CMAHC.
“I thought this is going to be a great opportunity to continue to grow my business and get back to my roots in aquatics,” she says.
Not only has she appreciated collaborating with aquatics professionals again, but she also works with the CDC, which oversees the Model Aquatic Health Code. She learns about public health, drawing somewhat on her pre-med studies, while providing the viewpoint of an aquatics operator.
Upon hiring Riester to replace Doug Sackett, the original executive director who retired, the CMAHC wanted her to grow the organization’s infrastructure. Since then, she has added a communications director, technical director and administration director to the staff.
Under her watch, CMAHC now is building its internal processes for the rewriting process of the model code, of which a new edition is published every three years.
It also is expanding its educational offerings. In January, the group debuted a webinar addressing what operators, public pool owners and staff should know about the MAHC.
To make the code more reflective of the whole country, the group has created the State Designee Committee, with the goal to sign on one public official to represent each state. It has only a few states left, Riester reports.
To increase the health of facilities across the nation, the CMAHC has also collaborated with Purdue University on an indoor air-quality study. With two phases complete, the organization is seeking to secure funds for Phase Three.
“We’re really just trying to help engage and connect people so that we can help make every swimming experience healthy, safe and enjoyable,” she says.
With all this swirling around her, Riester is happy to be home.
“It’s just been an incredible journey, and I love that I found my way back to aquatics,” she says. “To be able to lead an organization that has an amazing mission of healthy swimming and keeping people safe is all I’ve ever wanted to do in my career.”
