Two-time US Women’s Chess Champion Jennifer Shahade hosts the official podcast of US Chess Women, where she interviews female chess champions and leaders.
Ladies Knight with Jen Shahade ft. Donna Dodson LK036
Nov 18, 2021
Show notes
Jennifer Shahade welcomes artist, sculptor and Fulbright Scholar Donna Dodson on to the GRID. In 2018, Dodson created an epic chess set for a show at the Boston Sculptors Gallery, “the Match of the Matriarchs,” and she invited Jennifer, Daniel Meirom and Kledia Spiro to collaborate with her. The centerpiece of the show was a chess set featuring massive sea creatures made in wood, with Cephalopods (octopuses, squid, cuttlefish) against cetaceans (marine mammals like whales and dolphins).
Donna discusses the concept behind the work as they dive into the intelligence of sea creatures, including octopuses. Dodson also talks about her own contribution to the interactive piece Jennifer and Daniel created, “Not Particularly Beautiful” which traces the fear of powerful women in chess back to the madwoman chess queen that rose to power in the 16th century.
They also touch on a performance piece alongside the 2018 show, where Jennifer played chess player and mathematician Vanessa Sun on the extraordinary set, while artist and Olympic weightlifter Kledia Spiro performed.
Dodson also discusses a controversial work she created, Seagull Cinderella, which was beloved by many, but also attacked as a “duck with boobs” by one irate community member in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Jennifer and Donna tie the incident into another work Jen and Daniel contributed to the show, Breast Milk vs. Formula, as well as recent controversies in the chess world.
Ladies Knight with Jen Shahade ft. Nadya Ortiz LK035
Oct 19, 2021
Show notes
Jennifer speaks on Ladies Knight to Nadya Ortiz, a chess champion who now works as a senior software engineer at Apple. Born in Ibague, Colombia, Nadya talks about growing up in a lower-income family that supported her chess career, which led her career and life to flourish. She speaks about classism, and the power of chess as a vehicle for education and travel. Nadya is a living example of that dual success: she became the first WGM ever from her country and earned scholarships to the University of Texas at Brownsville and Purdue University, where she studied computer programming. Nadya travelled to over 30 countries to represent Colombia. Later she got a chess scholarship and studied computer science at University of Texas at Brownsville and Purdue. In an interview with CBS News Nadya said to anchor Dana Jacobson, “I feel I have so much privilege and so I have an obligation to help.” That segment, which also featured Jennifer and US Chess Women, can be viewed in full here. And Nadya has answered the call to give back. Not only does she have a program to teach kids from her village, she also has done workshops for US Chess Women to talk about some of her favorite games, as well as how chess helped her to get her where she is today. https://youtu.be/VDggs-e3ETk
Ladies Knight with Jen Shahade ft. Sarah Chiang LK034
Sep 21, 2021
Show notes
Our September Ladies Knight guest is NM Sarah Chiang, a graduate of Washington University in Saint Louis, a med student and an advocate for girls and women in chess. She is one of a handful of female players who have played in both the US Women’s Championship as well as the US Junior Championship.
During her time at Wash U, Chiang studied the stereotype threat and how it manifests in chess, titling her paper “A Man’s Game: Analysis of The Gender Divide in Chess.”
Sarah’s degree is in biochemistry, and she also took a creative writing courses. One of her pieces, “A Lone Cherry Tree”, chronicles her trip to play in the Pan-Am Championship in Peru, where she was the only girl among 60+ players in the Open Section. Here’s an excerpt from that:
Usually, I took pride in being one of the handful of females battling over a chess board. But I wasn’t naïve. People have long asked me, “Do you know how to play?” or “You’re playing in that section?” or “You’re a master??” Usually, I stashed those comments in my bag of funny stories. But this tournament was different. I had never been doused with so many degrading comments, and it was difficult to prevent them from seeping in. Why did my gender matter? Why didn’t people tell the kid who placed last in my section that he didn’t belong? Why did people still question me when I tied for sixth out of over sixty players?
Ladies Knight with Jen Shahade ft. Isabelle Choko LK033
Aug 18, 2021
Show notes
Ladies Knight welcomes Holocaust Survivor, author and 1956 French Women’s Chess champion, Isabelle Choko.
Born on September 18, 1928 in Lodz, Poland, Isabelle Choko was two weeks away from her 11th birthday when Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Isabelle and her loving parents were among 160,000 sent to the Lodz ghetto. Her father died there, while she and her mother were sent to Auschwitz in 1944. They later were sent to another notorious death camp, Bergen-Belsen, where her beloved mother died.
Isabelle was just 55 pounds when the camp was liberated by British soldiers in April 1945. Isabelle Choko later moved to France, where she discovered chess from her uncle. Also urged on by Grandmaster Savielly Tartokower, Isabelle became the French women’s Chess Champion in 1956, and went on to represent France in the first women’s Olympiad, in 1957 in the Netherlands. She went on to become a successful entrepreneur and artist. She’s also the author of The Young Blue-Eyed Girl and co-author of Stolen Youth: Five Women’s Survival in the Holocaust.
Madame Choko talks to us about the Queen’s Gambit, her most vivid memories of childhood survival and her message of peace and love for future generations.
This episode is co-hosted with Benjamin Portheault, who reached out to Isabelle Choko for this interview after his popular twitter thread reviewing a 2019 Europe Echecs story about Madame Choko. Benjamin also conducted the in-interview translation and visited Isabelle Choko in person to capture many of the photos in the gallery.
Many thanks to this episode’s executive producer Daniel Meirom, voice-over artist and translator Nathalie Boyer, editor Quinn Waters, editor/producer Jason Andre of Seven season films and the artist Juga of jugamusica.com. This episode is a joint production with the GRID.
Ladies Knight with Jen Shahade Featuring Laura Smith LK032
Jul 20, 2021
Show notes
Jennifer brings National Master and chess coach and streamer Laura Smith to Ladies Knight. Laura talks about her very early beginnings in the game and her current passion for chess in education and streaming. A mom of three, Laura gave birth to twins at the start of the pandemic and talks about the joys and struggles of parenting through quarantine.
Ladies Knight with Jen Shahade ft. Judith Kiragu and Dr. Philip Mwashe LK031
Jun 29, 2021
Show notes
In a special double-header, Jennifer interviews entrepreneur and organizer Judith Kiragu and chess patron Dr. Philip Mwashe on the origin story of the Lighthouse Chess Club in Mombasa, Kenya. Kiragu and Mwashe speak about changing the landscape of chess in Kenya by founding the club in May 2017. Throughout its four year history, they advance education through chess, give more opportunities for girls and juniors, and even bring in luminaries such as World Champion Vishy Anand to Kenya.
They are also chess parents, of a talented young girl, Yvonne, who is a member of the Cross-Cultural program that Jennifer and Judy started with Grandmaster Pontus Carlsson of Business Meets Kids Meets Chess. They speak about the controversy that erupted when Yvonne wanted to play in a mixed (Open to all genders) tournament.
Ladies Knight with Jen Shahade Featuring Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein LK030
May 17, 2021
Show notes
Jennifer Shahade welcomes theoretical physicist, author and chess enthusiast Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein to Ladies Knight. Prescod-Weinstein’s new book, The Disordered Comsos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime & Dreams Deferred is our current Madwoman book club selection. The book is both an ode to her love for physics and astronomy, a tour of some high and lowlights of Chanda’s own remarkable career and an impassioned call to make the world of science and the world in general more amenable to everyone with a focus on black women, people of color, non binary people and working people.
Chanda also talks about her powerful vision for seeing the world through the eyes of children and making sure black children have equal access to joy. She explains one of the most popular talking points of her book, why she sees “dark matter” as a misnomer, and gives her thoughts on the recent case Jennifer mentions, where artificial intelligence mistook a chess conversation for white supremacistpropaganda.
Women and gender minorities can sign up for the May 21stMadwoman’s book club on the Disordered Cosmos here. There will also be Q+A highlights for all to enjoy afterward.
Ladies Knight with Jen Shahade Featuring IM Irene Kharisma Sukandar LK029
Apr 20, 2021
Show notes
This month’s Ladies Knight features IM Irene Kharisma Sukandar, the first WGM from Indonesia, a five-time Olympian and the fifth ranked player in her country of any gender.
Irene was recently featured in the most viewed chess match of all time, with 1.3 million peak viewers, shattering previous records many times over.
The match attracted unprecedented attention because a few weeks prior, Irene’s opponent, Dadang Subur, known as Dewa Kipas online, scored a controversial victory against popular streamer and YouTuber IM Levy Rozman. Levy, we should note, is a supporter of US Chess Women. The Dewa Kipas account was closed for Fair Play violations soon after his game against Rozman (though the account closure was not solely related to that game). A mainstream article in Indonesian suggested that it was Levy’s fault that Dewa Kipas account was shut down, causing a pile-on of harassment toward the New York based chess star.
Sukandar bravely spoke out about her own opinion of the statistical analysis of the games, after which she received millions of angry messages too. Soon after Irene’s open letter, she was invited to a play a match against Dadang Subur himself on a wildly popular YouTube channel and podcast, hosted by Deddy Corbuzier. Corbuzier is a mentalist/magician turned actor and mainstream personality. He has over 13 million YouTube followers, and has been called the “Indonesian Joe Rogan.”
In addition to covering the intense weeks leading up to the match, Sukandar talked to Ladies Knight host Jennifer Shahade about how she psyched herself up to speak out “I had truth on my side.” She explains how friends and family helped her through the difficult time of countless negative messages, and her subsequent opportunities since being vindicated.
Sukandar also talks a little about her chess beginnings, her high hopes for Indonesian women’s chess and her happy memories of the United States, where she earned an MA in International Relations from Webster University, supplementing her BA in English Literature.
Ladies Knight with Jen Shahade Featuring Courtney Lauren Penn LK028
Mar 29, 2021
Show notes
Jennifer welcomes long-time friend Courtney Lauren Penn to Ladies Knight. Courtney is a producer and the founder of Renegade Entertainment. In addition to being a player in Hollywood, Courtney is also a chessplayer: she was ranked in the top fifty female players in the country for six years, and played in the very first SuperNationals. She is now partnered with actor Thomas Jane, who you know from “Hung” or “Boogie Nights,” “The Punisher,” to run the movie & TV production company, Renegade.
Courtney explains how producing a film is like and unlike a chess game. Courtney also remembers her experience from the first SuperNationals in Knoxville, and tells Jennifer how she instilled life lessons from the experience to girls in a early 2020 workshop with Jay Stallings’ program, “Promoting to Queens.” Courtney also talks about how chess helped her through pregnancy complications (that ended in the healthy birth of her now two year old son.)
Follow Courtney Lauren Penn and her work on Renegade’s FBandinstagram pages. You can find out about her extensive list of projects, which includes a TV series based on the Stephen King book, “From a Buick 8” on her IMDB.
You can find out about our US Chess Women programs, including a weekly girls club and women’s classes at uschesswomen.org. We appreciate every donation and renewal.
Ladies Knight with Jen Shahade Featuring Sabrina Chevannes LK027
Feb 16, 2021
Show notes
Women International Master, author and entrepreneur Sabrina Chevannes is our February guest on Ladies Knight. Sabrina talks about how she transitioned from chess to her current career leading a full service creative agency. She also gives Jen some advice on her own brand and the US Chess Women brand.
They move on to discussing Sabrina’s books, “Chess for Children” and her impetus for writing them as Jen gives a shout-out to a non profit, BarberShop Books, she recently learned about. Sabrina also talks about the importance of role models in chess like Grandmaster Pontus Carlsson, and elaborates on some of her own work with our US Chess Girls Club, including the Kenya Girls Meet US Girls Through Chess Initiative.
Sabrina also talks about missing her visits to the United States, and details fond trips in particular to Philadelphia and Detroit.
You can find out about our US Chess Women programs, including a weekly girls club and women’s classes at uschesswomen.org. We appreciate every donation and renewal.
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
Stay Connected
