We’re proud to shine our Client Spotlight on Diveheart, a pro bono client that travels around the world offering scuba diving and scuba therapy to people with disabilities, building their confidence, independence, and self-esteem. We spoke to Diveheart’s founder and president, Jim Elliott, and Executive Director Tinamarie Hernandez.
Tell us about your nonprofit organization and the communities you serve.
Tinamarie
Diveheart is 23 years old, and we serve people with disabilities through scuba diving and scuba therapy, but we like to say it’s people of all abilities, because we know that even our volunteers and the people who work with us benefit from what we do. Even the people who are not in the water find value and purpose out of it, so we work with everybody.
Jim
When I founded Diveheart 23 years ago, I knew the services we provided were therapeutic. We started working with university medical centers right away. The thrill for me is to get somebody who’s never been in the water or who uses a wheelchair, get them standing up in the deep end of a pool, and have them stand up and think, “Oh, my God! I’m standing up for the first time since my injury, or for the first time in my life.”
This is a big deal for people who have cerebral palsy or similar conditions. Combine that with the fact that they’re breathing underwater, which feels unnatural. They think, “Wait a minute. I’m breathing underwater, and I’m standing up, and I’m not in my wheelchair.” It’s this cool paradigm shift that happens. Now they start to self-identify as a diver instead of somebody with a disability, right?
I tell people, this is not about diving. It’s about taking this unrealized human potential that exists in people with disabilities and creating that paradigm shift. We try to help them become good stewards of the environment and get them involved in oceanography, but more than that, we want them to think they can do anything.
Tinamarie
My thrill is always working with people who have “invisible disabilities” — the people who have a traumatic brain injury, or are on the autism spectrum, or might look like you and me but are struggling with PTSD. What we have found is that the program helps them self-identify as someone [who] can do something, can accomplish something. Some people who once said, “I don’t think I can handle this certain situation in my life”—after a pool program, they say, “I can handle this.”
I love it because it also gives a lot of people a feeling of inclusivity. The people we work with, some of them feel like “outliers” — the people who others look at a little bit strangely because maybe they didn’t react to something in the way that is expected. When you’re working with people from Diveheart, they expect the unexpected. Our people can reassure them. They can say, “No, we still love you. We still want you to be here. We still want to work with you.” It really changes people. I’ve had parents say their children’s grades improve after working with us.
Jim
My daughter has been blind since birth, so I’ve been guiding and teaching blind skiers since the mid-1980s. I got her involved in downhill skiing, and it turned her life around.
Why do you do the work you do every day?
Jim
When I started Diveheart, I left a successful career in the media business with the Tribune Company. All of a sudden, it’s like, “This is what I want to do.” I don’t draw a salary. I thought this was going to be a little club thing. I had no idea. Last fall, we were in Malaysia and Borneo. We’re just doing stuff all over the world.
Tinamarie
Every day at Diveheart is Christmas. Every day really inspires us to carry on to the next day. Yes, we might have a tough moment. We might have difficulties, and we definitely have challenges, but every day gives us a reason to come back and do it again tomorrow, and to create another opportunity. And how do we grow? We have such amazing people [who] work with us and for us and try to further the cause. Not a day goes by where I’m just like, “We got it.” Jim says that 90% of success is getting up and getting there, and we’re inspired every day to do it for sure.
Jim
Now our mission is to grow this and scale it up so that we can do this all over the world. One out of five people has a disability — that’s 20% of the population. If you can get them inspired, it’ll be a different world.
What type of impact is Diveheart aiming to make, and how are you trying to influence the disability community you serve?
Jim
In 1997, when I started teaching people with disabilities to dive full-time, there was no one out there. I looked on the internet; I couldn’t find anyone. And now every major training agency has adopted some component of what we do. We’ve influenced the entire industry, which is so cool. The No. 1 training agency in the world — PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) — points to us as the leader.
Over the past 12 years, I think we’ve been chasing this vision of scaling up and building a pool where we could have a safe, controlled, warm-water environment to replicate some of the benefits we see in deep water, because you can’t always run out to the Caribbean and get down deep enough to have this extra output of serotonin. Experts at Johns Hopkins told us that when a diver gets to 66 feet underwater, they get these extra benefits. It reduces PTSD symptoms, all that kind of stuff. It took us six years to get patents for this type of extra-deep pool.
When it’s going to be 93 degrees, it’s not for swimming. It’s not a lap pool. We’ll teach people. We want to build it on some land in north Chicago that was donated to us. It’s an underserved community there, so we want kids to try getting in the water who would’ve never had the chance before.
We want to serve this underserved population while we’re serving veterans with disabilities and others with disabilities; while we’re doing research and getting grants from Mayo, Northwestern, Duke, and all these places. All these people we’ve worked with already — they’ll be able to come to this destination and do research, rehab, education, and training vocational opportunities for people so they can go out into the world and do some of this cool stuff. To help good stewards of the environment is another part of our goal.
Can you share a recent success or a particular experience or project that you’ve experienced?
Jim
A few years back, we met the filmmaker David Marsh. He did this documentary, Adapting to Dive, which was immediately picked up by Amazon and other streaming services. In the last two years, it’s received 12 international film festival awards.
Tinamarie had a great idea. She said, “Why don’t we do a YouTube playlist called Divers with Heart, and we’ll do a profile of somebody with ALS or a spinal cord injury.” We probably have 20 or 30 of that type of videos now. Then David came with us to the Mayo Clinic, and now we have a dozen doctor profiles about scuba therapy and hyperbaric scuba therapy and sports medicine.
Are there shared goals and values that drive the successful relationship between you and Nixon Peabody?
Jim
Nixon Peabody helps us with different types of things. One is our song. I never thought we’d have this. I have a buddy that produces music, he’s an Emmy-nominated guy, and he asked, “How can I help you?” I said, “You do songs — write a song for us!” So he did. Then we got in touch with NP’s entertainment team, and we got a document that we worked out with the musicians. I wanted all the rights, so they helped us get all the rights.
Tinamarie
Every person we’ve worked with from Nixon Peabody — they help us find a way, even when we’re like, “I don’t know how we’re going to do this.” Our big thing is we’re always adapting, and Nixon Peabody attorneys know how to adapt. They know how to find a way to a solution. And Nixon Peabody believes in giving. You’re helping us through your pro bono program, and we appreciate that. The time and talent given to us by others have elevated Diveheart to levels above where we thought we would ever be.