Meet our team: Tracey Hickman

“I've been poolside for as long as I can remember,” she says.

Tracey was a competitive swimmer growing up and her mother was a facility manager, so she was always at the pool after school and it was almost natural that her first job was as a volunteer swim teacher.

She says it was the “aha moment” of teaching someone a new skill and giving them the knowledge to enjoy the water safely that made her want to continue down a path in aquatics.

“It’s about helping somebody be the best that they can be. That's been the crux of everything that I do, whether it be in the water teaching, whether I’m teaching a new teacher or if I'm managing a team of leaders.”

From life guarding to aqua fitness to working for councils, she has added a number of feathers to her cap. Tracey was an education operations manager for Swimming New Zealand and even started her own swim school with her mother.

It was in the early 2000s, while gaining qualifications and certificates, that she had her first brush with Te Mahi Ako, then known as SFRITO. In 2010 she started assessing swim teacher qualifications for the organisation, which had then become Skills Active Aotearoa. This eventually led her to take up her current role in June 2022, she says.

“I was able to reconnect with people that I've worked with in the past around the country.”

Being a current swim teacher herself, Tracey says she is all too familiar with the challenges facing the aquatics industry and in her role with Te Mahi Ako, she is helping workplaces upskill their staff for retention.

“That's the big focus at the moment, because everyone in the industry is stretched for staff. Pools and recreation facilities, since Covid, have been closing their doors early and swim and water safety lessons are being cancelled. This means that the community has unable to recreate and learn. That adds to all sorts of health issues – mental and physical.”

To keep more people working in aquatics, Tracey says they need to know there is a future for them in the industry and it does not have to be just a temporary job.

“I want people to be able to start off on the frontline and actually see a career pathway in an exciting industry. So that’s where we come in. Te Mahi Ako supports the aquatics industry as a whole in being able to reduce barriers for learning and make that pathway as easy as possible.”