2026 Participant Biographies

Raphi is a martial artist and community safety educator with experience teaching empowerment-based self-defense and boundary-setting in community and advocacy spaces. His work focuses on helping people—particularly those from marginalized communities—build confidence, clarity, and agency around personal safety without relying on fear-based messaging or physical dominance.

Drawing on years of martial arts practice and applied self-defense experience, he emphasizes decision-making, verbal boundary-setting, and simple, effective physical responses that work under stress. His approach centers consent, trauma awareness, and nervous-system understanding, recognizing how social conditioning and minority stress can impact a person’s ability to respond in threatening situations.

As a trans person, he brings lived experience to his work, acknowledging the real safety concerns trans and gender-expansive people face while offering tools to increase safety without living in constant hypervigilance. His workshops integrate discussion, embodied practice, and realistic demonstrations to reinforce that participants already have the capacity to protect themselves.