LifeChanger of the Year Nominee Profile

Bridget McKinney was nominated by Linda Brown, a member of the community.

Ms. McKinney is a former principal and current District Supervisor with Miami-Dade Public Schools. She is a Board Member of CARE Elementary School in Overton, and a part of the Miami Rescue Mission. She is also President and CEO of Professionals Sharing with a Purpose (P-SWAP), a non-profit organization dedicated to providing networking opportunities for personal, business, and professional endeavors. Ms. McKinney’s education began in 1994 as a teacher at Carol City Senior High School. Since then, she has served high-need communities in a variety of capacities such as classroom teacher, activities director, assistant principal, principal, district supervisor and community activist. 

For the last four summers, Ms. McKinney devoted her entire six-week vacation to implement free swimming lessons for over 300 inner city youth. The lessons were held at the Opa-Locka Community Center in Miami-Dade County.

A former life guard, pool manager, and aquatics specialist with Miami-Dade County Parks and Recreation, Ms. McKinney heeded a call to action after alarming statistics alerted her of a crisis in accidental drownings among young children, the majority of which took place in swimming pools and in open water sites.

In response to the evidence, Ms. McKinney rallied P-SWAP to host a Child Safety Learn To Swim Program that ran from June 27th through August 5, 2016. Each child participant received a life jacket, and parents received a Hands Only CPR Training at the completion of the course. The program provided support in high need areas by teaching preventive water safety measures in order to reduce the amount of unintentional fatal drownings. In addition, Ms. McKinney sought to instill in participants, workers and volunteers the idea that swimmers could become firefighters, police officers, engineers, life-guards, water safety instructors, coaches, military service men and women and even an Olympic champion, like Simone Manuel, at the tender age of 16 years old.

While in high school and throughout her undergraduate education at Bethune Cookman College, Ms. McKinney would return to her love of teaching swimming each summer to all ages and special needs children. Most recently, she utilized her “Learn to Swim” program to not only save lives, but to provide invaluable workplace experience and leadership skills to community youth. She recruited high school and college students certified in water safety. They received paid employment during the summer to assist the students with their upcoming school needs.

Ms. McKinney also rallied volunteers from across Miami-Dade and Broward Counties to sponsor a child so that they could learn to swim at no cost to the parents or her community. She engaged corporate and community sponsors to expand the program to help not only students, but parents.

She also helped fundraise to provide every child participant with a life jacket to be used when swimming. A life-jacket was the parting gift to remind the children of P-SWAP’s safety theme, “Don’t Just Pack It, Wear Your Jacket.” P-SWAP joined forces with community organizations and leaders by providing additional resources to educate parents and children on preventive water safety measures needed to enjoy recreational water activities.

“We know we have done right by our kids and parents," McKinney once said. "I am confident that this swim program will turn into a testimony of our concerted efforts for our community as a whole to not only know how to swim, but how to respond in the event of an emergency. We have proven to ourselves and others that we can make strides in improving our community in spite of our unique circumstances.”

"Through her passion and vision, professional organizations, councilmen and women from various districts, and individual donors stepped up and sponsored no less than five children each," Brown recalled. "Chanel 10 ABC News featured the swim program and accurately described the need to provide services like this for our communities. The American Heart Association was so inspired by the program that they asked to use the video showing a two-year-old imitating a parent performing CPR on a mannequin."

In addition to her initiatives to teach children to swim, Ms. McKinney, a mother of three, is a committed philanthropist who devotes time monthly to read to the children at CARE Elementary. "Ms. McKinney believes that as citizens, we must embrace every opportunity presented, to help our community experience success," Brown said.

Ms. McKinney also mentors the young girls who are part of "Women of Tomorrow", which provides alternative activities and educational strategies to prevent and reduce the risk of gun violence.

Every year, Ms. McKinney provides a "Christmas Wish," giving a gift and providing Christmas dinners to a needy family during the holiday season at her church. She also participates in a pen pal program that writes letters to families who have lost a child to gun violence.