Training Wheels: How a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Road Trip Jump-Started My Search for a Fulfilling Life

Valerie Worthington was born and raised in Pennington, New Jersey, save for a year her family spent in Germany while she and her sister were in high school. It was probably then that her wanderlust kicked into overdrive, as her family spent the year taking advantage of the opportunity to have as many adventures as possible. She went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and after a few years in the non-profit world in Washington, DC, completed a doctorate in educational psychology at Michigan State University. It was in graduate school, in 1998, that she was introduced to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, a meeting that has reverberated throughout her life to this day. She was awarded her black belt in jiu-jitsu in 2010 at New Breed Academy in Santa Fe Springs, California. She currently resides in Philadelphia and trains at Princeton BJJ in central New Jersey.