Her Story
About Camille
Camille McClaren is currently a psychology student at St. Francis College in New York City and a lifelong martial artist whose work bridges cognitive science, social-emotional education, and sport performance. She began practicing taekwondo at age five and has earned her Kukkiwon-certified 4th Dan black belt, founding Pure Taekwondo NYC, a women-run, inclusive, and science-informed martial arts school as a teenager. Her coaching approach emphasizes motor learning, embodied cognition, and adaptive teaching methods, developed through years of working with students of all ages, abilities, and learning needs. She is also involved in academic research exploring the relationship between movement, language, and learning, with interests in metacognition, cognitive science, and educational equity. As an instructor and mentor, Camille has built a reputation for innovative, student-centered teaching that prioritizes understanding over rote technique. She has coached athletes to competitive success in sport poomsae at state, national, and international levels, while also creating programs for beginner students, youth learners, and specialized populations. Her teaching philosophy integrates discipline, creativity, and critical thinking, often introducing concepts like “concept stripping” to help students transfer knowledge across contexts and deepen comprehension. Through Pure Taekwondo NYC, she has also expanded access to martial arts training, originally serving Orthodox Jewish girls and now welcoming a broader, diverse community. Beyond athletics, Camille is academically ambitious and actively engaged in research and leadership roles. She has contributed to interdisciplinary projects at Long Island University and currently works as a knowledge and semantic engineering intern in an Educational Technology AI Lab. She is also an advocate for mental health awareness, disability equity, and inclusive education, and frequently uses her platform to discuss developmental psychology, learning systems, and youth empowerment. Across all of her work, she is driven by a commitment to help others build confidence, critical thinking skills, and ownership of both mind and body.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Camille
01What do you attribute your success to?
I started doing Taekwondo when I was five, and when I was seven, I decided this is what I want to do with my life. I told my first Taekwondo master "I want to be a Taekwondo master just like you and have my own school". He looked at me and laughed and said, "you will never be a master, no one will ever bow to you", because I'm a girl. That lit me on fire, and I started my school when I was a teenager, initially focusing on Orthodox Jewish girls who are very conservative religiously and need to be taught by a woman. I expanded it to include high-level young black belt athletes who competed nationally and internationally, and I coached them to medal stands in multiple levels of competition. As an adult, I mainly teach privately right now. It's really important that you understand that my school does things differently. It is woman-run, whereas most of the field is male-dominated, and it will be feminist-oriented, science-backed in all of the methodology that I use. I'm currently in college gathering more and more knowledge about how to shape my methodology so that it really follows cognitive science and motor learning information, so that we're doing things differently. Cognition and motor learning have profound cross over, making sports good for your mind and body, the difference is that I want to do it on purpose, very intentionally. We're not just making up stuff. Right now, I'm a college student, and I'm gathering more information so I can shape my methodology correctly. I'm very academically driven, so I plan on earning degrees in psychology, cognitive science, and motor learning to help with my credibility to people who don't realize that Taekwondo Masters, the only qualification you really need is to know Taekwondo. I've been doing Taekwondo for 22 years, and there is much room for educational research and applications of therapeutic use. I'm looking to change the culture to a more feminist-oriented culture in my own Dojang and raise awareness and educate through conversation about gender-related issues in martial arts, as well as explore and expand the understanding of it as a multi-sensory, cognitive, and motor enrichment learning education model through my biggest contributive goal of creating an interactive textbook on the cognitive science of teaching and learning sport poomsae.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Do what you're passionate about.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
An ongoing challenge that women face is that all of American business culture has gender-related issues. This is true in the martial arts industry as well. As a feminist, I want to be loud about it, but sadly, in my industry, the louder I am, the more people avoid me and these hard conversations. I've even been directly told by male counterparts that this issue is not real and that it's all in my head. I'm a fighter, though. Most people, all you have to do is make it hard for them, and they'll stop. I say bring it on.
04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Mental health awareness and advocacy are very important to me and my business, as well as disability awareness and advocacy in all environments. In athletic spaces, more and more athletes are speaking up about mental health, and as I've gotten older, the emphasis on the mental aspects of sport has only grown because of these leaders. However, in martial arts, because of the patriarchal history and identity and mindsets that come with the historical "tough-guy" mentality and masculine norms, the industry is further behind compared to how other sports are evolving.
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