The team
Franca
Franca joined in 2021, starting as a volunteer and working her way up to become our project manager and pop-up shop boss.
Michi
Michi has been taking beautiful pictures of chinkilla events since 2022, and joined the team as staff photographer and website specialist.
Sarah
Sarah is our co-founder, word magician, marketing specialist and paid ads expert supporting the team from New York.
Dani
Dani is our co-founder and CEO, visual creator, team leader, and visionary - managing the products, events, and daily biz.
The fam
Without our community chinkilla wouldn't exist. At every event, camp and workshop we can count on them <3.
The founders
We’re so glad you found chinkilla! Let us tell you who we are and why we do what we do. It all started in 2016 with Dani and Sarah – the founders of chinkilla. Since then, our team, our community, and our passion for martial arts and female empowerment have grown immensely
But let's back up for a sec and go way back, to the beginning of chinkilla.
February 2016, Jordan. Sarah was living and working in Amman, where she also taught kickboxing classes at what was, at the time, the first and only martial arts studio for women in the entire Middle East. I was in Jordan at the same time, filming my debut documentary WATERPROOF. As a passionate martial artist, I visited that very studio between shoots — the one where Sarah was teaching. And one day, we crossed paths.We immediately connected over our shared passion for martial arts and women’s rights. In the middle of our conversation, Sarah asked, “Where in Germany do you actually live?” I replied, “You won’t know it — it’s a very small student town.” As it turned out, that was exactly the town Sarah would move to just a few months later. And the next time we saw each other was over dinner at my shared apartment. – Dani
January 2017, Germany. Walking through this little fairy-tale town, I realized how crazy it was to have met Dani on another continent. As she worked her way through a master’s degree and documentary, I settled in. Wherever I am, whatever the language, one thing stays the same: I asked around if I could open a women’s kickboxing class. The local uni agreed to give it a try, and within 5 minutes of opening registration, the class was fully booked - with 75 women on the waiting list. An attestation to the need for women’s spaces, anywhere in the world. And a truth we knew all too well. Frustrated by growing reports of femicide and violence in the news, Dani sent me a fateful text message in June 2018: Do you think it would be a good idea to do a German city tour where girls can get interested in self-defense? That was the spark that lit the fire, and sent us off together from city to city, offering self-defense & kickboxing workshops and bootcamps. We met women of all backgrounds and listened to their stories. They added fuel to our fire, and even when Dani and I became separated once again by my move to Paderborn, the flames kept growing. We were ready to take it to the next level. – Sarah
January 2020. Now there were 500 kilometers between us. We continued working on our ideas and visions via Skype. In early 2020, we officially founded our startup. After countless workshops and bootcamps, we started our next project in spring 2020: martial arts apparel for women, by women. And we quickly realized we’d need more support for this. Without hesitation, we applied for the NRW Founder’s Grant — and not only did we get it, but we also received an office space and lots of support from the startup center garage33 in Paderborn. By summer 2021, the time had come: chinkilla’s first fight gear line. We saw a gap in the market for apparel that wasn’t too pink, too short, or too tight — and we filled it. Produced in Europe! This was followed by countless photo shoots in cities all across Germany, allowing us to build a nationwide network of female martial artists and trainers. Not long after that, I decided to swap countless Deutsche Bahn tickets for an apartment in Paderborn. Cause we are stronger together. – Dani
March 2022. All our great ideas start with a text message. As did the #JoinOurFight,campaign. Something was missing in our content. I suggested a call toaction: “Join our fight or something.” That triggered a light switch in Dani's head, and what started as a discussion about ads turned into a whole social movement. On International Women’s Day 2022, a whopping 25 gyms across Germany answered the call to Join Our Fight, bringing free martial arts and self-defense classes to 800 women nationwide - all in the same evening. With it came media coverage and outreach from corporations and individuals: can you bring this to our location? It was a game changer, and our first taste of what scaling meant. The prospect of reaching more women and girls was both thrilling and terrifying. How do we turn these hundreds into thousands? And thousands into millions? We can’t say it here because it’s confidential. But we can tell you this: the chinkilla story continues. The next chapter is being written, and it’ll knock your socks off. – Sarah
December 2023. Time flies when you're keeping yourselves busy! After two #JoinOurFight campaigns, countless camps, and so many workshops, chinkilla has grown tremendously. With our FightCation concept, we launched our first mixed-gender camp in the mountains, and also designed and produced more unisex apparel. And since life is always full of ups and downs, we faced a major change: after many years in Germany, Sarah is moving back to New York. From now on, it’s back to Zoom meetings and FaceTime brainstorming sessions. The year 2024 brought countless new projects — among them The Ultimate Badass, the first chinkilla-powered All Women Martial Arts Tournament, which we’re incredibly proud of. – Dani
March 2025. I’ve been part of chinkilla for over four years now, and a lot has happened during that time—especially in the past year. “Mondays are office days” – every Monday we meet at the office to brainstorm new products, plan our camps and events, and most importantly: for coffee talks! We’ve just successfully completed #JoinOurFight for the fourth time, and the second edition of our All Women Martial Arts Tournament, “The Ultimate Badass,” is already coming up. We added a fourth camp to our annual Camp Season, held countless workshops with our trainers, and were supported for over six months by our first official intern, Laureen. But the highlight at the beginning of the year was definitely our little chinkilla workation with Sarah in New York!– Franca