Live Fiercely

From Strength to Strength We Rise Together

Self-Defense from prevention to physical responses grounded in research & resilience instead of fear.

Who We Are

We train trainers to deliver truly impactful education in women's proactive and responsive self-defense. We address the 80% of the reality women face that most women's self-defense does not address. We have the honest conversations, the hard conversations most training programs avoid.

We will equip you with a new mindset: women's self-defense education from a place of strength & power...not fear.

Solid, Effective Training

500 Rising’s first goal is to create solid effective training we can easily disseminate. We believe there is a statistical tipping point. We don’t know what it will be, but that doesn’t matter to us. We know it’s out there somewhere.

You can change the statistics of violence against women. Click the button to find out how you can be part of the first Safe House for women & children in Zambia. Every penny literally makes a difference. In addition, your support helps us honor professionals who have volunteered their professional services to our program. We are a 501(c)3 Not-For-Profit Organization and your donation is a charitable contribution.

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CEO / President

Dr. Tammy McCracken

Dr. Tammy McCracken is the founder of 500Rising, Inc. She has extensive experience in personal training for self-defense, corporate training experiences in organizational mental health, DEI, Conflict Management, & self-defense (including prevention, threat assessment and accessible physical skills).

She is Global Solutions Director of Personal Defense Industries (PDI and serves as program consultant to Kore Self-Defense/Krav Maga & the World Wide Martial Arts Association. She is a certified Conflict Communication Instructor & certified Situational Awareness Specialist.

While training with Krav Maga Global, Dr. McCracken earned an Expert Rank in Israel and her original instructor certification was granted by Eyal Yanilov, Alan Predolin & Ilya Dunsky. She was the third woman to earn an expert rank with KMG in North America and the first fully certified female instructor on the east coast within the same organization.

Dr. McCracken has provided training and instruction for private companies, international safety and security organizations, and non-profit groups serving populations at high risk for violence. For her full bio, please visit our instructors page.

Wild Women Forge Forward

"Moving from strength to strength."

- Dr. Tammy Yard McCracken, Pys.D

Our Mission

We are committed to creating opportunities for women to step into their agency and personal authority through valid, effective, & relevant community level education and training programs.

500 Rising started as a face-palm blog post. A personal rant by our CEO/President about strength and power with the #METOO movement. The METOO movement helped bring activation for social awareness to the stubborn statistics in sexual violence. But what no meme or hashtag can do (and yes we have a hashtag too), is give Target demographics the skills necessary to change the statistics at an individual level.

Violence against women means many things: sexual assault, rape, physical assault, domestic violence, workplace harassment, psychological abuse, etc. We firmly believe the final solution is cultural and social change. We also know fundamental cultural shifts take decades and we aren’t willing to wait.

"Strength is more than a hashtag."

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