If you think speaking in front of a large audience is scary, try swimming through 21 miles of frigid, shark-inhabited waters in the dead of night a few years shy of turning 70.
Meetings industry veteran Deborah Gardner, the featured speaker at three Meetings Today LIVE! events through 2026, braved the chilly waters between Catalina Island and the mainland of California to set a Guinness World Record as the oldest woman to have achieved the feat. Fewer than 900 people of any age have completed the swim.
The 21-mile October 8 swim by the 66-and-a-half-year-old took a little more than 13 hours, during which she braved two- to three-foot swells in a pitch-black, 66-degree ocean during the longest stretch of the ordeal.
“Let’s just say the most fearful thing in the water… was me,” Gardner recounted. “Between a few sea creatures, a pitch-black ocean, a full super moon that caused two- to three-foot rough swells all night long, I didn’t really have time to think about fear. I had to focus on every stroke, every breath, every technique. It was all about staying in motion, one pull at a time.”
The Catalina Island Channel swim is dubbed the “Mount Everest of open-water swimming” and is part of the Oceans Seven challenge overseen by the World Open Water Swimming Association. Gardner said now that the Catalina swim is accomplished, she hopes to tackle two more long-distance swims in what is dubbed the Triple Crown: the 20 Bridges Swim Around Manhattan and the English Channel.
Gardner was supported by a 12-person crew and dedicated the swim to her 90-year-old father, Major Joedy Gardner (USMC Ret.), all while raising funds for Southern Cross Service Dogs, a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to preventing veteran suicides and overcoming PTSD.
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Swimming and Speaking
Gardner has a long history both as a competitive swimmer and speaker, and her Catalina Island Channel swim represented the culmination of a nearly lifelong passion—and struggle—with competitive swimming.
Her duel with the pool began as a youngster in Yuma, Arizona, where she grew up with two siblings, her mom and a U.S. Marine Corps Vietnam veteran father in a travel trailer.
“I grew up in a 16-foot Aristocrat trailer in the hottest city in the country, Yuma, Arizona—that’s where I learned to swim,” she recalled. “I went to meets and went to Arizona State University for college, training for the 1980 Olympics, which were boycotted, and then I missed the Pan American Games by a one 100th of second. It was just one dream after another going out to sea.”
Gardner then abandoned her swimming dreams to settle into a career in the hospitality industry and over 30 years worked for the top brands in the business, including Marriott, Hilton, Omni, Sheraton and Renaissance. As her career involved working as a meeting/event planner, hotel supplier and speaker, she even earned the nickname “The Triple Threat” from her Fortune 500 speaking clients.
But some dreams die hard.
[Related Podcast: Deborah Gardner: A Meetings Triple Threat]
“I walked away from the pool completely. I just hung my goggles up—I just had to let it go,” she said. “But the thing with dreams is they don’t die. Out of nowhere, the water started calling me again. Only this time it wasn’t about the medals or the recognition, it was more about me facing my fear at a whole new level.
“The dream I had once abandoned found its way back to me not to show me who I was, but who I had become,” she continued. “It was waiting until I was ready to meet it. Don’t chase your dreams—catch your dreams.”
While constantly pushing the limits and demonstrating an impressive degree of discipline may seem like personality traits of an overly serious person, Gardner is relentlessly upbeat and always one to add an air of lightheartedness in her communications. In fact, those who correspond with Gardner—aka “Deborah G”—are often graced with her signature “Splashtastic” affirmation. You can’t help but smile.
Besides her frequent speaking engagements, Gardner is also host of the Hospitality Today Live interview podcast, which she launched in 2019—coincidentally the same year she was introduced to open-water swimming— which continues to this day. She currently produces four special edition shows a year, for Global Meetings Industry Day, International Women’s Day, a student-focused episode and one specifically for frontline meeting and event planners.
Meetings Today LIVE! Keynotes
Gardner, a frequent contributor to Meetings Today, is slated to deliver featured speaking sessions at three 2026 Meetings Today LIVE! events, a hosted-buyer program that facilitates business connections between meeting planners and suppliers via one-on-one appointments, site visits, networking receptions and educational programming.
Her 2026 presentations will lean heavily on her more than 30-year career in the meetings industry, delivering inspiration to an audience she is intimately familiar with.
“The areas I’m going to cover include ‘stop chasing your dreams—start catching them,’” she said. “We live in a world of dreams in the meetings industry—we make dreams come true. Lead with the hard part first. In the meetings and events world, we always try to do the easy things, but the hard parts are where the ‘stretch’ is. We work long hours, we have short deadlines, but the secret of leading with the hard is when no one is watching.”
Other meetings and events lessons from her record-breaking endeavor include:
- Keep moving.
- Never swim alone (teamwork).
- Try different waters and environments—you’ll never know what you’ll learn.
- Cross-training is very important in both swimming and the hospitality industry.
“I could not have accomplished that swim without my crew, but ultimately, your mind is the boss, bottom line. Your mind is the boss and your body follows,” Gardner emphasized. “I had to strategize every stroke—arm through the wave, under the wave, over the wave? I had to respond, one stroke after another.”
To experience Gardner’s keynote address in person, access the 2026 roster of Meetings Today LIVE! events.
