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Meow Meow Foundation President Doug Forbes had just completed his second full semester in a Harvard master’s program for journalism when he received a call that forever changed his life.

His beloved 6-year-old daughter Roxie drowned at a summer camp pool due to gross negligence.

Forbes decided to withdraw from his summer semester. Within a week, however, he found himself back before a computer screen furiously investigating how his daughter could have drowned. This effort opened a much larger door to the overall quandary of childhood drowning.

Not only did Forbes discover that the recreational child care facility where his daughter drowned had orchestrated a fraudulent lifeguard certification scheme, he also successfully convinced the American Red Cross to withdraw all facility certifications and ban facility owners from training and certifying staff. He is currently demanding that the Red Cross make sweeping changes that would eliminate systemic oversight gaps, even if it requires him to engage in a legal battle.

Forbes returned to Harvard in the fall after his daughter was killed. He thereafter focused on investigative work related to the drowning prevention world. He officially graduates Summa Cum Laude in March and hopes to walk on Harvard Square in May.

For his capstone project, Forbes crafted an intensive 5-part multimedia report on childhood drowning, inclusive of interviews with aquatics experts, doctors, government agencies, NGOs and other stakeholders across the globe.

Feel free to contact him with questions or insights.