From Judo Champion to Tech Entrepreneur: Meet Dr. AnnMaria Rousey De Mars
In honor of Women's History Month, we are proud to feature Dr. AnnMaria Rousey De Mars. Dr. AnnMaria Rousey De Mars is a small business owner, serial entrepreneur and was the first American to win the world judo championships. She is president of 7 Generation Games, a tech startup she co-founded and The Julia Group, a statistical consulting company.
Tell us about your journey:
My first car had a bumper sticker, “I’m the person your mother warned you about.” I was a bad kid. I was kicked out of multiple schools and foster homes for fighting, swearing, truancy, running away. Once I moved out and was on my own, I was underage, with a fake ID that let me get a job and apartment. I couldn’t always afford heat or food. Two things changed my trajectory where I ended up living by the beach in Santa Monica instead of prison; I was good at math and great at judo. Thanks to stellar SAT scores, I was accepted at Washington University in St. Louis, then received fellowships to attend the University of Minnesota for an MBA and University of California for a Ph.D.
I started judo when I was 12 years old and when many of my friends were on the street, I was in the dojo working out. I made my first U.S. team at 19 and at 26 I became the first American to win the world judo championships.
Because math was such a factor in changing my life, it’s no coincidence that in my academic career, I focused on applied statistics and, particularly, educational testing (remember those SAT scores). My personal life has been up and down. I married young, divorced, married again and my second husband died when I had a child in third-grade and two in preschool. At the time, I was an Associate Professor at University of Jamestown, in North Dakota. Shortly thereafter, I co-founded a consulting company on the Spirit Lake Nation focused on statistical analysis and evaluation for health, human service and education organizations. This spun off two new companies that continue today. The Julia Group, is a statistical consulting company, and 7 Generation Games, which I co-founded with my oldest daughter and current husband (third, if you’re counting) makes educational games and the tools to build them.
When my third (of four, if you’re counting) daughter decided to train in judo, I got back on the mat to help her. I also was the first woman elected president of a national judo organization in the U.S., as I worked to create and fund programs to develop young athletes. In 2022, I was appointed by the governor to the California State Athletic Commission and am currently the only woman commissioner.
From running a national organization to working as an engineer, I was told many times, “A woman can’t do this job.” My response has always been, “Watch me.”
No one succeeds alone. Too often, funding and hiring decisions are made based on connections. I had no family connections. Far from summering in the Hamptons, I don’t think anyone I knew could find the Hamptons on a map. Fortunately mentors, both academic and professional, taught me, advised me and connected me throughout my career.
Consequently, I try to be the change I want to see in the world. My company runs an internship program that hires youth from underserved communities. These days, I am often, as Hamilton put it, “in the room where it happens” and I make an effort to suggest women and other underrepresented candidates. Now, I’m their connection.
What pivotal experiences shaped your current path?
One key moment in my life happened in a classroom and the other in a gym. At age 15, I took the PSAT shortly before I dropped out of high school. A few months later, I received my scores along with a list of colleges that would accept me if I did equally well on the SAT. Off to an alternative school I went, occasionally showing up for class, took the SAT and was accepted at college with a full tuition waiver. It’s no coincidence that my doctoral dissertation was on standardized testing, because that one morning taking the PSAT truly pivoted my life.
The second experience was when my mother said, “You cannot spend your life sitting in your room reading and eating.” She drove me to the YMCA, pushed me out of the car and said, “Go join something.” In those pre-Title IX days, few sports were open to girls, but the judo instructor allowed females because he had a sister who wanted to practice judo. Throughout my teen years, when many of my friends were breaking into buildings or doing drugs, I wasn’t there, not because I was a better person but because I was at practice. People laugh when I say that if it wasn’t for math and judo I would be in Chino Women’s Prison right now, but it’s the truth.
The third key moment was when my husband had an accident that left him disabled, and, five years later, he died, leaving me a widow with three young children. I sat in my living room and cried for a week. Then, I got up and went back to work. I realized that there were two choices, the rest of my life could be a tragedy, or not. I decided to do whatever I could to make it a good life for me and my children. When friends laud me for being so strong, I wonder, “Really? What other choice did I have?”
What are the most valuable lessons you've learned about yourself through your life and career?
Perseverance wins. Whether it was in academics or sports, I have come out ahead of people who were smarter than me, more talented, had more connections, because I showed up every day and put in the work. As a coach, I would tell athletes, “If somewhere out there, a person is coming to practice every day when you are not, that person will beat you. Maybe not today and maybe not next month, but, eventually, they will beat you.”
I remember that lesson regularly because, while running a startup like 7 Generation Games, setbacks are inevitable. Some months we don’t get the contract or grant we worked on or we need to refactor our code to support hardware or software changes in the market and I feel like a failure. I have to remind myself other times in my career when I failed, picked myself up and started over the next day. In judo we have a saying, "Success is being thrown seven times and getting up eight."
Never stop learning. I made my first educational game when I was 57 years old. I moved to Chile for a year as part of the Startup Chile accelerator when I was 59. I continually get frustrated because there is so much more I want to learn than there will ever be time. I started programming at 15 because I thought it was fun and continue with it because I still think it’s fun. I think it is impossible to know what will be the “next thing” that is marketable so, for me, it’s better to follow what I really enjoy doing.
This is my life, what I do every day, so if this isn’t the life I want, I should do something else. When I find myself working with people I don’t respect, or doing work I don’t enjoy or that doesn’t have the possibility to make the world a better place, I immediately work on finding myself a different place. There’s no sense in waiting for tenure, retirement or having a million dollars in the bank to be the person you want to be.
What drives your desire to contribute and make a difference?
I want to be that person my younger self needed. My mother asked me, “Why do you want to help kids? No one helped you.” I answered, “Yes, and my childhood was painful, hard and it sucked!”
In fact, I did have mentors, my eighth-grade algebra teacher, first judo coach, professors who encouraged me to get an MBA, and later, a Ph.D., my doctoral dissertation advisor, Dr. Richard Eyman, the professor who gave me data for my dissertation and subsequent research articles, Dr. Jane Mercer, Dr. Yolanda Venegas, who wanted to see more Latina Ph.D.’s and was one of the first clients for my statistical consulting company, Tom Cirone, who was one of our early investors in 7 Generation Games and a tireless cheerleader.
As I said, judo and math kept me out of prison, so my subsequent years have centered around both. I taught judo as a volunteer from age 15 to 66 and still give occasional clinics. Running companies that center around the application or teaching of math enables me to reach young people more intensively (as interns, junior developers) and at a much greater scale through our educational games. Math is often an obstacle to students getting higher education or majoring in STEM fields. I try to develop games that they will play, whether they like math or not, to give them a solid foundation going into high school.
If you could go back and advise your younger self, what would it be?
You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room. Anyone who knew me when I was young will tell you that I had a chip on my shoulder. I took any correction as a personal criticism and wasted so much time trying to prove that I was smarter than other people rather than trying to learn from them. It was a gradual shift to realize that the person who doesn’t know as much math as me might be an expert in Ojibwe history that has the perfect narrative for our next game, a teacher who can break down a concept so struggling students can understand it or a salesperson who can explain the value of our games to the tribal council. Also, there is no shame in admitting you don’t know something and asking for help.
How can GlobalMindED support your aspirations and help you achieve your goals?
GlobalMindED can help by sharing our resources with its network. We’d be delighted to have people use our educational resources and are always looking for funding and collaborators to make more.
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We have a large catalog of games, available for free, that students can play to learn math, Indigenous and Latino history. Some are available in English and Spanish or English and Lakota. We’d love for you to get the word out for people to play them.
- Our games are funded by non-profits, tribal governments and federal agencies that want to reach and engage a larger community. Because we have developed
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proprietary software to enable us to make games rapidly, it probably costs far less than they think. Anyone who wants to make a game with us can contact us here.
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During the COVID pandemic, we developed a website of lessons, videos and games to teach mathematics, agricultural science, Indigenous and Latino history and culture. All of these are available free for educators or parents to use here.
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With funding from the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources program, we are making two more games teaching Indigenous and rural history of the U.S. Interested educators and community members can sign up here.
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