Nika Schwinden

Niceli Gislaine Schwinden, known as Nika, has been teaching women to fight for more than a decade. A psychologist by training, she started jiu-jitsu in 2011 and since late 2014 has led the women’s classes at Gracie Barra Curitiba. With her husband, black belt Rodrigo “Pimpolho” Fajardo, she is also a co-founder of Casa GB.

As an athlete she first became an IBJJF World Master champion in 2013, still a blue belt, winning both her division and the absolute in master 1. She won the World Master again in 2015 at purple belt and added silver medals at purple and brown belt. As a black belt, with Gracie Barra, she was World Master runner-up in 2019 and took bronze in 2021.

The work she is proudest of, though, is around her students’ waists. In December 2024 she promoted her tenth woman to black belt. “Everyone has their own victories, and these are definitely mine on the mat. I joke that they are my world titles,” she told VF Comunica. Among the students who train with her and Pimpolho is Lauriane Stavacz, who won her division and the absolute at brown belt at the 2026 No-Gi Pans.

Nika is also one of the leaders of the GBF Camp, Gracie Barra’s women’s gathering, which brought more than 250 women together in Arizona in 2024, and she has hosted classes with around 160 women in Curitiba. That same year she coordinated a campaign at the academy that raised more than R$40,000 for families hit by the floods in Rio Grande do Sul.

Her answer about what the gentle art did for her is direct. “I am passionate about jiu-jitsu because it did not teach me to be rough. It taught me to hold back my roughness and respect people who are different from me more,” she said on Pura Connection. And she added: “My students made me the woman I am today.”