JESS FRASER

Black belt Jess Fraser is the creator and driving force behind Australian Girls in Gi.  She is fiercely proud to be the leader of this groundbreaking group which is the largest nationwide unified organisation of its kind in the world. 

Establishing AGIG in 2010, Jess identified the need for proactively fostering an inclusive, gender neutral culture within our community to positively affect the retention and growth of participation within our sport; particularly in regard to female athletes. Through AGIG, Jess has tirelessly worked on this goal, focusing on cultivating community development, education, leadership and cultural change. She does this by creating and maintaining inclusive safe spaces, large scale female focused events, online and hands-on member support, mentorship, leadership, empowering women through training, employment opportunities, sponsorship and more.

Her contribution to the wider Australian BJJ community includes creating and establishing the only national women and girls tournament roster as well as managing the GTA Tournaments, which sponsored over 30 Australian athletes to travel to America to represent at the World Championships.

In 2015 she created and established the Australian BJJ Community online forum, now over 10 000 members and growing. She moderated and maintained this public group for 5 years.

Leveraging off her successful career as an international competitor Jess was able to raise the visibility and therefore opportunities for Australian women in BJJ. She has since created employment opportunities for over 100 contractors within the BJJ community, returning over $100k directly back into our community through coaching opportunities, admin roles, sales, stock management, sponsorships and more. These roles have predominantly been filled by women.

She has created and managed more than 50 competitions (small to large scale), as well as running the largest female only events currently held in the world (last attendance for 4 day camp was 145+ women), all while moderating and managing the vast AGIG community, coaching her own team and developing her own technique and knowledge of BJJ.

Outside of jiu jitsu, her service to community is further represented in self defence workshops for the general public which she offers throughout the country (over 40 events to date), raising money for Women’s shelters to support victims of Domestic Violence and Sexual Abuse.