User:Mohd Diab/sandbox/linakhalife

Lina khalifeh (born in 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.

Additionally, Lina has worked in her family’ s business in Jordan for four years as a marketing manager in manufacturing products in the educational field (white boards, black boards, electronic boards, etc.) and marketing those products internationally.

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 parent’s 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.

Recognition and Achievements
Some of 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.

In 2014, she was selected by the Swedish She Entrepreneur program and presented her project to the Swedish royal family. It is seen as one of the best social purpose enterprises in the Middle East.

She is received by Barack Obama at the White House with other "leaders of social change" in the Middle East in May 2015,.

At the TED conference as part of the TEDWomen conferences in Prague in 2016, Lina Khalifeh is invited to talk about her work and give a demonstration.

His SheFighter brand became a franchise in June 2017 with the opening of a second studio in Ramallah, Palestine and the planned opening of a third studio in Hong Kong in 2018..

She was on the BBC's 100 Women's list in 2017, in the category "Sexism in Sport".

In 2018, she received the Economic Empowerment Award at the 2018 Global Leadership Award at the annual ceremony in Washington for her work in women's empowerment.. The same year, on March 24, she launched the SheFighter Empowering Women through self-defense program in Jordan with the support of the Minister for Gender Equality..

Lina was awarded the Economic Empowerment leadership award by Hillary Clinton and Vital Voices in Washington D.C. in 2018. Lina has also been awarded the ESPYS Stuart Scott Humanitarian ENSPIRE award presented by ESPN and UFC in Los Angeles, California in 2019 and spoke at the 2019 World Economic Forum in Davos.

In 2013, Lina became of one of twenty Laureate Global Fellows ( http://library.iyfnet.org/node/551 ), all young founders/CEOs who have pioneered cutting-edge solutions to urgent societal challenges. Fellow projects are distinguished by their innovative approaches, their proven track records for success, and their potential to be sustainable over the long-term. Lina hopes to continue to grow her business and spread messages that empower women and reduce violence against women. Where are they now? - Lina Khalifeh | Thunderbird (asu.edu)