2020 Recipient: Award of Excellence
Sunny Graff is a legend in our organization and in martial arts in general. Sunny has trained for almost 50 years, is a Taekwondo and Lapunti Arnis grandmaster, a posture/alignment specialist, and has produced more than 300 feminist antiracist self-defense instructors and 120 black belts. She’s authored self-defense books in English and German, was a founding member of the NWMAF, and served on the first steering committee. She’s a World Games and Pan American Games gold medalist, a four-time National Taekwondo Champion, and a recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Taekwondo Hall of Fame.
Sunny has been an active member of the women’s martial arts community (NWMAF, PAWMA, and AWMAI) for almost five decades. Barbara Schmidt of Women in Movement in Frankfurt, Germany, wrote that given Sunny’s nearly 50 years of feminist antiracist activism; self-defense and empowerment of women and girls; outreach to marginalized communities; and her extraordinary martial arts skill, performance, teaching, and leadership, she is “truly a woman of excellence.”