Kickin’ it!

ATA chief exec has seen many changes, looks to make more.

You can’t be named Taekwon and not know tae kwon do, some may say. Taekwon Lee is likely to agree. Not only does he know the martial art; he has achieved the Songahm tae kwon do rank of senior master, holding a seventh-degree Black Belt.

This past summer, Lee took over as chief executive officer of the 54-year-old ATA (once known as the American Taekwondo Association), begun by his late father, Eternal Grand Master H.U. Lee and billed as America’s largest martial arts organization. Recently, ATA reached the 1,100 mark in total number of schools around the world, with School No. 1,100 based in Portugal. They’re currently at 1,101.

Still fairly fresh from the ATA World Championships in Phoenix in mid-July, Lee and the organization are gearing up for Fall Nationals, Oct. 18-21 in Pittsburgh. Meanwhile Lee is working to rebuild an ATA that went though a rough period in recent years.

“We’ve reinvested into our own management here, in starting off with one [local] school,” Lee says. “Now we have two schools in Central Arkansas. Our goal is to expand into eight schools that are ATA — ATA Martial Arts, specifically.”

One of the two schools operates out of ATA headquarters; there’s also a club in Maumelle. The organization hopes to expand into west Little Rock, North Little Rock, the Benton-Bryant area and Conway.

“We’re getting our systems in place, our standard operating procedures in place, here — not just with our training and certified instruction, but the way that they operate as a business,” Lee says. “We’re currently training aggressively now with the staff.

“In the next two, three years, our goal is to expand out into the different communities. … One of the great things about having a commercial-operated school here at headquarters is proof of concept for our licensees around the world. We will be providing standard operating procedures for new schools and existing schools — something that we kind of had in the past, but

really didn’t focus on in the last 10-15 years. Moving forward, we’ll continue to learn what else is necessary. … Going into our 55th anniversary next year, we will be focusing on the ATA difference — between our instruction, our 55 years of history, our tradition, our updates to our standards.”

‘A GREAT LISTENER’

Jesse Isaacs, a close friend for more than 25 years, has every confidence that ATA will blossom under Lee’s leadership strengths. He notes that Lee “is a great listener; his insight and ability to listen, to understand, is a great skill that most leaders do not possess.”

Isaacs tells how Lee can always be seen “walking the crowd.”

“He takes the time to get to know and build relationships. And as a leader I think that speaks volumes.”

Before taking his current position, Lee operated a school in Atlanta, which he opened in 2019. He moved back to Arkansas to take the ATA helm on June 27.

“It’s going fantastic,” Lee says of his job. “It’s been like, they say, drinking water from a fire hose. However, for me, because I have history in the ATA and I also had the experience as a school owner, operator and instructor and being a senior master in the organization, it’s been an easier transition, per se, than if it was … anybody else.

“Overall, because I love this organization, I have a mission to continue on my father’s legacy and his mission. Day in, day out, I go home and I’m exhausted. But the work is so fulfilling, even in this short amount of time. … I cannot even tell you how fulfilled I’ve been just in a short [time].”

TRIAL BY FIRE

The first thing Lee took on was working on smoothing the “rough patch” ATA went through in his four-year absence.

“We did lose a lot of schools due to the pandemic, [and] some of our leadership decided to go in a different direction,” Lee says. “I guess you could say, we learned a lot about ourselves.

“There were some instructors and licensees that did go as well,” Lee adds, speculating that they were intrigued by “opportunities that [offered a] ‘perhaps you could be a big fish in a little pond’ scenario.”

Some of those who left have asked to return. Previously, ATA lacked an avenue for that to happen.

“One of my first initiatives was to create a pathway,” Lee says. “I worked closely with the presiding Grand Master, the departments internally here, and the Masters’ Council to create a procedure for us to vet some of these instructors to come back. … So we have an application process now.” ATA has already begun accepting returnees under the new procedure.

“We believe in second chances,” Lee says.

Lee works closely with his uncle and instructor, Grand Master M.K. Lee, the youngest brother of H.U. Lee and the latest to serve as the organization’s presiding grand master. M.K. Lee praises his nephew’s work as CEO so far, especially recruiting those who’d left the organization.

“Once he sets a goal, something that he wants, he has a drive and a consistency, and also he has the discipline to follow through, and he accomplishes it,” M.K. Lee says. “That’s a very rare quality in any man.”

THE BIG MOVE

In October 2019, ATA announced its intention to move its World Championships from Little Rock to Phoenix in 2021. It was difficult news for Arkansas’ capital city, which for years had benefited economically from an event that literally brought in visitors from around the globe. But the association had outgrown the facilities here.

Lee’s love for Little Rock remains.

“Little Rock is very near and dear to my heart, and to ATA. We have so much history here. … Our style of tae kwon do was inspired by Little Rock.”

“Songahm” means “pine tree and rock,” he explains.

“The leaders and our founder, Eternal Grand Master, were inspired by the pine tree here locally, as well as the rocks and the mountainous terrain. … The philosophy is, the rock is your foundation. And if you have a strong foundation, your strong traditions, your strong belief in what you’re trying to achieve and what you’re doing — then anything is possible. And then your pine tree represents your growth … through your leadership in martial arts.

“So Little Rock literally has a tremendous amount of influence on ATA martial artists around the world. I wish personally that we had the facilities to bring World Championships back to Little Rock.”

LED ‘TWO LIVES’

It was near Little Rock that Lee, as he puts it, “grew up with two lives.”

“I grew up as Lucas … in a very rural area out in Alexander, on the Pulaski-Saline County line.” The family homestead was on two or three acres, complete with a pond — and the four-wheeler he drove.

The Lees were the only non-whites in their neighborhood, and back in the 1980s, discrimination was very real … whether or not they meant it, Lee says. “I mean, these people were very good people. And we were friends with them. However, you would get the occasional stereotypical discrimination back then. We faced it; my father faced it.

“I faced it going to school,” adds the Bryant High School graduate. “I faced racism, discrimination, a lot of bullying. It was very challenging.” As it was, Lee suffered from boyhood separation anxiety issues due to his parents’ frequent travels.

On the flip side was Lee’s other life.

“I would go to ATA, and I was the Grand Master’s son, where people respected my family. They knew about the martial arts. We traveled around the world, and people were bowing towards my dad and I got to see that side. And so life was confusing.”

His tae kwon do training, which he began at the age of 4, was, well, a bit more circuitous than what would be expected of someone with his parentage.

‘I STILL CRIED’

“I cried so much in class that I was disruptive to the whole class.” So he withdrew. His mother asked him to promise her that when he turned 5, he would resume his training. “I said yes. So then I still cried, at 5.”

His mother was undeterred.

“She just said, ‘You don’t have a choice. You’re training. Your name is Taekwon. You do not have a choice.’ It was the best thing she ever said to me. [As] I grew up, that insecurity turned into confidence.” But, adds Lee, “that confidence turned into arrogance.

“One of the biggest things that happened to me in my martial arts journey was at Red Belt. I was testing for Black Belt. And I goofed off in class all the time. I got in trouble all the time.”

Lee had made it to Recommended Black Belt status. The Black Belt candidate then had six months to test for Decided Black Belt status. Three tries were allowed. A candidate who failed all three times would revert to Red Belt status.

“So three testings over a six-month period, I failed three times. And after that third try breaking that board and I didn’t break it, I fell to the ground and started crying because I knew I was going back to Red Belt. The instructor was very torn because he was like, ‘How do I demote the Grand Master’s son?’ He actually went back to my dad’s office and said, ‘Sir, what do you want me to do?’ And my dad said, ‘You have to follow the rules.’

‘A RED BELT AGAIN’

“I wore my red belt. And the day that I walked back into the tae kwon do school, I still remember the feeling, and my face was, I’m sure, very red. But I had to own it, right? So I walked [in] with my chin held high. And everyone asked me, all the kids asked me, ‘Where’s your black belt? Where’s your black belt?’ And I said, ‘Well, I didn’t earn it. And so I’m a Red Belt again.’

“That failure turned into victory because from that moment I started to train like a serious Black Belt.” In 2025, he will test for his eighth-degree Black Belt.

Although Lee grew up with ATA, he has been around a bit. He’s an alumnus of the University of Central Florida, where he studied marketing and communications. He also spent two years at the Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea, studying the Korean language and culture. He worked as a White House intern under the Clinton administration. He spent time in California, and even worked as a Starbucks barista for a time. His previous job with ATA was serving as director of instruction in the training department.

Chief Master Tammy Harvey-Stauber, Lee’s instructor during his preteen and teenage years and the first female ninth-degree Black Belt in the ATA, remembers Lee “running around headquarters as a child and as an adult following in his father’s footsteps,” she says.

From a student, Harvey-Stauber saw Lee’s rise in ATA to the roles of instructor, working in marketing, media development, director of training and board member before his stint as a school owner — “which gives him the insight to understand the needs and challenges that school owners are faced with. His experiences give him tools to direct this organization for the future.”

“He is genuine, listens and very open to ideas. He understands his father’s vision for the organization. He is his father’s son. … He understands firsthand the sacrifices his father made to build the organization. He has taken on the challenge that his father started, to continue the dream and vision of spreading Songahm tae kwon do worldwide.”

FAMILY MAN

As the ATA family is important to Lee, so is blood family. He has three siblings … a half-brother, David Lee, who lives in the New YorkNew Jersey area; and half-sister, Flora Fleet, a Seattle resident; they’re 12 and 10 years older, respectively. His sister Lisa Lee, a year and a half his senior, lives in Little Rock and directs ATA’s information technology department.

His mother, Sun C. Lee, splits her time between Arkansas and California. “She is a woman with a real backbone and has so much courage,” Lee says in admiration of his mother, who’d been a homemaker until her husband passed away. “She took the reins and really had a fight for what was right in the ATA.”

Lee is also a husband — he met his wife, Vanessa, while living in Los Angeles — and father of two girls, Emelia, 10, and Anika 5.

“They have been my rock,” he says. “They’ve gone on this journey with me. … They keep me grounded. When I take things too seriously, my 5-year-old knows how to clench my heart.”

It’s obvious that ATA has done the same.

Lee admits that the organization has had its hard knocks — “but we are still ATA strong.”