Martial arts helped get Zahra Haeri out of the house. Now the lessons and discipline she’s learned on the jiu-jitsu mat will help her navigate the challenges of a move across the country to tackle her dream job, developing software for autonomous cars at General Motors in Markham, Ont.
Haeri, 23, came to Canada from Tehran, Iran, two years ago to continue her studies in mechatronic engineering at Simon Fraser University. But first she had to pass an English proficiency test.
She locked herself in her room and studied for six months. So focussed was she on learning English, she didn’t even realize Lafarge Lake was practically outside the back door of her Coquitlam home.
Haeri’s self-imposed isolation depleted her physically and mentally, she said. “I was kinda depressed.”
That’s when she discovered martial arts.
At first Haeri practiced the maneuvers of kickboxing as a workout to improve her cardio fitness. When her instructor at Coquitlam Martial Arts suggested she kick her training up a notch by learning jiu jitsu, Haeri was intrigued. Again she practiced the movements; she wasn’t interested in actual combat with an opponent.
But already, said Haeri, she noticed the workouts having an impact on her studies and her work in the lab as part of a team of SFU researchers and grad students developing a diagnostic tool for detecting breast cancer.
“It’s releasing all the energy from your mind,” said Haeri. “You don’t show your frustration.”
More importantly, said Haeri, martial arts gave her life another dimension.
“It brought be back to life,” said Haeri. “It taught me there is something more to life than just studying.”
So it seemed a natural progression for Haeri to start taking on opponents. She hasn’t looked back.
Haeri recently won a gold medal at the Copa Katana Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu tournament at the Richmond Oval, to go along with a silver from the Western Canadian Martial Arts Championships and several medals from local competitions.
In late August she’ll be hauling that hardware across Canada after she was offered a position on the team developing self-driving cars at General Motors. She’d applied for a co-op position so she was surprised she was offered a full-time gig.
“I was so happy, I wanted to hug the postman,” said Haeri, whose interest in applying her engineering talents to the auto industry was sparked by an article she’d read as a child in Iran about the head designer at BMW who was also Persian.
“That made me so proud,” said Haeri. “I thought about how much I would really like to work for a big car company some day.”
And with that day fast approaching, Haeri’s spending her spare time, when she’s not putting the finishing touches on Master’s thesis or working out at the gym, researching martial arts academies at her future home.
After all, “if you’re just focussing on one thing, you can’t be successful,” said Haeri.
