Lina Khalifeh
Lina Khalifeh (born 1986) is a Jordanian black belt taekwondo champion, after winning 20 medals for the Jordanian team, she decided to extend her career past the martial arts. Lina Khalifeh is a Global Inspirational and Humanitarian Speaker who spoke in 150+ global Conferences. In 2010, after she found out that one of her friends was attacked and beaten up by her father and brother, she decided to start giving mixed martial arts self-defense classes from her parent’s basement, building up on that, she opened her own self-defense center named “She Fighter” in 2012  with the goal to teach women in Amman to defend themselves since sexual harassment and act of aggression were common in her country. She welcomed in her center more than 20,000 women aged between 5 and 75. With the help of some NGOs, she managed to train more than 3000 Syrian refugee women and foreign housekeepers. Moreover, she taught many women with disabilities across Jordan. The goal of her foundation “SheFighter” is to empower women physically, mentally and emotionally through Self-Defense training. She also devoted a part of her time to give seminars on self-defense, and to raising  awareness in various environment like schools and orphanages. Early life. Bullied from a young age and always getting into fights, the parents of Lina Khalifeh, at the time 5, decided to enroll her in cousin's taekwondo school. According to her, taekwondo taught her how to be confident and disciplined. With the goal of representing her country in the Olympics, she earned her black belt at the age of 15 and became one of the best athletes in her weight category in Jordan. However, due to her my grandfather being a Palestinian refugee, she was rejected. After this set back , Lina Khalifeh started to over train, injuring herself in the process. At the age of 22, she torn her ACL, and after 2 surgeries, she did not recover well. Doctors informed her that she could not do martial arts anymore. She described this period as “the lowest point of my life” Career. After finding out that her friend was abused by her family, she decided that since she could not fight professionally anymore due to her injuries, she would use her combating experience to teach other women how to fight. She started out in her parents' basement in 2010 with  only 2 clients, but then, after two years she decided she should expend her class. She started out by learning the basics of business, she enrolled in of the Supporting Entrepreneurs and Enterprise Development Seminars (SEEDS) – a program designed to support women entrepreneurs start or grow their business. In partnership with the USAID and the Business Development Centre in Jordan, plus she learned from Julie Jones, her Phoenix mentor. After learning the fundamentals about how to grow a business, she labeled her growing foundation “SheFighter” with the main goal of empowering women from all aspects (physical, emotional, and mental), and  pushing gender equality by spreading awareness and raising their physical intelligence through sports, Martial Arts and Self-Defense, and to do so Lina Khalifeh focused both on physical fighting and discussion about what  women deal with in their daily lives. She found it difficult to do so due to nature of the male-dominated society in Jordan, according to her, some women were afraid of change and preferred to follow culture and religion. But the foundation still found success, training many women in Jordan and across the world, some being disabled. “Shefighter” became an international entity having expanded to more  than 35 countries. Lina has also worked for four years as a marketing manager in her family's firm in Jordan, where she manufactured educational items (white boards, black boards, electronic boards, and so on) and marketed them abroad. Achievements. Some of the many Conferences Lina was invited to speak at: The Business of Fashion Summit 2019,The Economic World Forum 2019, Women in the World Summit 2019, Dragon Fly 2019 Thailand, European Development Summit 2018, European Parliament 2015, One Young World 2016, Concordia Summit (Virtual) 2020, Los Angeles Tribunate (Virtual) 2020 and BMO Bank (Virtual) 2020. She was also selected  by the "She Entrepreneur" program to present her work to the Swedish royal family. She was one of the "leaders of social change" presented by Barack Obama at the white house. She was featured at the TED conference as part of the TEDWomen conferences to talk about her work.<ref>