Badass of the Month: Jamie Berlant-Levine!

Jamie Berlant-Levine’s skill set extends far beyond Krav Maga, in which she currently (as of September 2019) holds a well-earned Orange Belt. Her artistic ability is also totally genius-level amazing, which is one of the reasons we wanted to show her off as the September Badass of the Month!

From incredibly intricate sculptures to rough sketches, Jamie Berlant-Levine uses Krav Maga as inspiration for expressing herself through art. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing her training journal (and if you haven’t, ask her next time you see her!), you’ll know that she has a well trained eye and a true passion for Krav Maga. She draws anatomical figures representing what she learned in class, writes instructions for herself, and then uses her training journal later as a self-coaching tool.

“I got tired of forgetting what I learned in class,” Jamie said. We recommend keeping training journals to everyone for exactly this reason, but Jamie decided to take it to another level… because she’s a badass.

“I write down everything, both technical and emotional, turning what I saw as failures into thoughts of successes. It’s a visual of progress.” {{SWOON}}

Jamie makes art as a profession, and she’s pretty amazing at what she does. “The artwork that I make is…human experience. Love, death, body, physical beings; being in this world physically, mentally, and emotionally; family dynamics, power structures.” 

She’s worked in some pretty prestigious art museums, such as the Guggenheim, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Jewish Museum, The Field Museum, and more locally, the Blanton, as well as Landmarks at the University of Texas at Austin. Her roles were mostly behind the scenes, involving making mounts for art pieces and setting up art exhibits, which involved creativity and talent in construction, but she’s also had a handful of exhibits of her own. To see some of Jamie’s amazing art, click here, here, and here!

Her construction work is also pretty badass, and many of her contributions can be seen at our brand new space. She spent literally hours volunteering at the gym helping us with the build-out and the move. Her expertise was a life-saver, and we can’t thank her enough!

While she’s Wonder Woman at the gym, she’s also Supermom at home. Both of her daughters are students in our Krav Junior program, and we believe they’ll grow up to be strong like their mama. Jamie and her family are all long time students at Lions, and we love seeing the commitment they show to their training!

Jamie’s kiddos also take after her in terms of their artistic skill. In fact, her oldest won the T-shirt design contest last year. You know those etch-a-sketch Lions T-shirts? Yeah, her daughter designed those. ON AN ACTUAL ETCH-A-SKETCH!! We separated the adults and kids for the contest… adults design adult T-shirts, kids design one for the Krav Junior program… but Jamie’s daughter was like, “Naw, I’m a badass like my mama,” so she went off and won the adult category. SHE WAS SEVEN!!

Pretty cool woman, huh? If you see Jamie at the gym next time you’re there, make sure to give her a high five or tell her what a badass she is. Because clearly she is indeed quite the badass!