2019 WE Empower awardee Lina Khalifeh has written an inspiring book, SheFighter: From Trouble Maker to Global Change Maker. SheFighter chronicles Lina’s life journey from a little girl in Jordan, often beaten up by the boys she wanted to play soccer with, to a Gold medalist and black belt in Taekwondo martial arts who founded a business franchise to help other women defend themselves from violence.
SheFighter was the first self defense studio in Jordan and the Middle East and is now an international franchise that has trained more than 18,000 women globally. Khalifeh describes the program as “designed to empower women physically, mentally and emotionally through self defense training.”
Khalifeh is honored in the Vital Voices Global Partnership exhibition “Women Using Their Power to Empower,” currently showing at the Kennedy Center in Washington along with 99 other exceptional women leaders worldwide. While the global pandemic caused by COVID-19 meant the annual Vital Voices gala to mark International Women’s Day had to be postponed, Khalifeh celebrated with the World Bank lead for the Women, Business and the Law project, Tea Trumbic, and WE Empower co-chair and ASU Global Futures Laboratory Director of Global Partnerships, Amanda Ellis.