A former collegiate athlete and a two-time Olympic trial athlete (2008 and 2012), has coached swimming since 2017 in Northeast Ohio impacting dozens of age group, high school and college athletes in his spare time. As part of his swimming career journey, Eddis was a 2x state qualifier and District Champion while at Shaw High School, a 3x national champion, 4x conference champion and school record holder at Mount Union College. In 2008, he moved from Cleveland to North Carolina to train with the top USA Swimming Olympic athletes at SwimMAC. Eddis is a USA Swimming Certified Coach and has been a certified lifeguard for 23 years.
By day, Eddis is an IT professional in the retail and petroleum industries and has a BA degree focused on Information Technology from Mount Union College. He was born, raised and currently lives in East Cleveland with his wife and two children.
Co-Founder and Medical Advisor, Sonja Harris-Haywood, MD, MS
Serves as the Associate Dean of the Northeast Ohio Medical University College of Medicine. With an emphasis on disparities, cultural competency and workforce diversity, Dr. Haywood’s helps to prepare future physicians from underrepresented groups to work in the communities from which they come.
Dr. Haywood has been an active member of LESI (Lake Erie Swimming) swim clubs for over 10 years. She is using her expertise in workforce diversity to aid LESI in developing a diversity program. In her role as safety director, she has focused her efforts on improving the safety of competitive swimming for all athletes. She lives in University Heights with her husband and two children.
Co-Founder, Diana Cox Johannessen, MBA, PCC
Diana was born and raised in Cleveland Heights (Class of '89) and is widely known for raising three competitive swimmers along with running a family business. Over the past 2 decades, she has been active serving on several non-profits boards including her local public school PTAs, Heights Community Congress and three local area athletic club programs related to youth and competitive swimming.
Sonja and Diana have formed the non-profit arm, Urban Swim CLE Foundation in hopes of raising funds, making connections, opening doors and bringing awareness to our urban communities about the importance of learning to swim. With our fundraising efforts and talent recruiting, we are able to elevate quality swim programming in communities that have limited or no programming and facilitate widening the access of these programs to underutilized pools.
Diana lives in Cleveland Heights with her husband and three children.
