Nancy Lanoue
7^thDegree Black Belt
Founder,
Head Instructor Emerita

Shuseki Shihan Nancy Lanoue has been practicing martial arts since 1977. She began in Goju Karate and women’s self-defense under Sensei Susan Murdock at the Women’s Martial Arts Center in New York. In those early years, Nancy began to develop a political analysis of violence and to understand martial arts as a non-violence practice. From 1979 to 1982, with two other women, she started and co-directed SAFE, an organization that created empowering self-defense seminars and delivered them to schools, community groups, and corporations. In 1979, Nancy began to study Seido Karate under Kaicho Tadashi Nakamura.
She is now a nanadan, 7^th-degree black belt, in this traditional Japanese art and continues to train with Kaicho. In 1991, she began studying Kajukenbo, a hard/soft eclectic martial art, under her partner, Sifu Sarah Ludden. Sifu Nancy holds a 2^nd-degree black belt in that art. In 1985, Nancy began teaching Seido Karate at the Women’s Gym in Chicago. In 1990, she added a children’s program, and in 1995, she moved the school into its current space two doors down and opened the karate program to men. With the assistance of their dedicated senior students, who now include over 61 active black belts, they currently oversee the practice of over 250 adult & children students.
In addition to her work at Thousand Waves, Nancy serves as a trainer at Special Training, the annual camp of the National Women’s Martial Arts Federation. In 2001, the New Traditions Women’s Martial Arts Hall of Fame named her Instructor of the Year. She has also taught at the Association of Women Martial Arts Instructors’ national conference, ‘Teaching the Teacher.’ Nancy has served as a member of the violence committee of Chicago’s Advisory Council on Women. She has supported local, state, and national initiatives to reduce and prevent violence against women and children. She is also a founding member of the Lesbian Community Cancer Project.