A community full of clients knows Kristen Melo as a dedicated pool pro — but first and foremost, she considers herself an educator. To her, the most important part of the job is helping people understand their pools.

“At the bare minimum, my goal when I get called out for a quote is to teach people something they didn’t know before that might help them,” she says. “If it comes down to the chemistry, and they learned something about calcium or high pH — or even just that their salt cell only produces chlorine — then I did my job.”

Her company, Preserve Pools, is aptly named after a mission to protect those major backyard investments. “People spend a lot of money on pools. They deserve to have them taken care of,” she explains.

Melo’s passion for her customers’ education reflects her own drive to learn and improve. “The guys in the industry, they kind of grow up knowing these [technical] things, and it’s just second nature for them. But it’s exciting for me,” she says. “I did everything that I could to gain more knowledge, because it was just so much fun to me…If there was a class within driving range, I went. If there was a certification that I could get, I got it. And I’m still learning, I’m still growing.”