Meet The WJF Team
Executive
Jason Garfield
Founder and President
I started juggling when I was 11 years old in 1986. Within a few years, I had won several juggling contests and achieved international notoriety within the juggling community. To date, I have produced several best-selling instructional and demonstrative videos for juggling available on thewjfstore.com. After becoming frustrated with the lack of mainstream attention the skill of juggling attracted, I decided to create the sport of juggling modeled after the Olympic gymnastics code of points scoring system and, in 2003, I founded the World Juggling Federation with the goal being to produce sport juggling competition programs for ESPN while providing incentive and motivation for jugglers to push themselves to their technical limits and raise the bar globally. That goal was accomplished in 2004 and has continued to the present. After 15 years of producing sport juggling competition programs, my new goal for the organization is to take the sport of juggling to the Olympics. The team on this page was formed for that very purpose.
Legal
Jennifer Szabo
General Counsel
Dan serves as the General Counsel for the WJF. An avid juggler himself, he competed from WJF 5 to WJF 8, which included earning 3rd place in the WJF 8 Overall Championship. He hopes to use his legal skills to help bring sport juggling to the next level, and have competitive juggling reach an even larger audience. On top of his passion for juggling, Dan practices law as a partner of Sanchez & Brown, P.A. in Orlando, FL. He holds an MBA from the University of Florida and a law degree from Stetson University College of Law.
Representatives
Kyle Reeser
Liaison to the International Olympic Committee
Kyle Reeser holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering and is the co-founder and CEO of Recon Biotech LLC in Rochester, NY. His love of travel and fascination with language and culture has taken him all over the world, notably studying Mandarin Chinese while living in Beijing, China and developing low-cost 3D printed prosthetic limbs while working in East Africa through the global nonprofit e-NABLE. He has juggled on and off for the past 20 years. Kyle joined the WJF team to help bring sport juggling to the world stage through the development of international affiliate programs, and work toward its ultimate inclusion as a competitive category in the Olympic Games.
Website
Raphael Elspas
Webmaster
Born in Los Angeles, Raphael is an entrepreneur, experienced web developer, and firmware engineer at a defense contractor. He first discovered the WJF after meeting Scotty Cavaugh, winner of the Intermediates event at the first WJF, at a school entertainment show. As both an engineer and a student athlete in college, most of Raphael's interests lie in technically demanding routines, the complexity of transitions, and the physical prowess required for advanced sport juggling. Raphael is now an avid siteswap mathematics enthusiast and hopes to contribute more to the field and theory behind siteswaps.
Competition Scoring
Josh Horton
Head Judge and Social Media Consultant
Josh learned about The WJF while in high school and began training with the goal of someday being good enough to compete. He was soon an intermediate competitor at WJF4 and later competed in advanced competitions. Now in his old age, Josh is the World Juggling Federation's head judge. As a full-time YouTuber/content creator Josh also consults for the WJF Social media team.
David Sohigian
Vova Galchenko
Scoring Consultant
Born in 1987, I started juggling in my home town of Penza, Russia when I was six as part of my parents' grand master plan to keep my younger sister and I off the streets. From foreign languages to pull-ups, from math and sciences to juggling, we did it all. My dad was a strong advocate for achievement being key to social mobility and hard work being key to achievement. As my sister and I witnessed hard work bringing in rewards, it reinforced our drive to work even harder. The virtuous cycle led us to performing at various events in Russia, some including guests from abroad. With help of a kind American juggler we met at that time, we bought a video camera and started posting videos of our juggling online. As is well known now, the internet has the power to accelerate the hard work <=> achievement flywheel dramatically. Within a couple of years, we started getting invited to headline juggling events around the world as well as teach workshops. In our early teens, we traveled all over the world and by ages 15 and 12 we landed in the United States. With a great degree of help from the juggling community, we've been able to get settled in the new country and juggle professionally. My achievements spanned from media appearances on The Ellen Degeneres Show, Nightline ABC, and many others to win multiple world juggling championships. Eventually, getting in a car accident scared me into a career in IT that I have grown to enjoy even more so than juggling professionally, but I will never forget that it's juggling that has afforded all of this to me. I still love watching it done well and dabble in it myself occasionally. Having seen how far technical juggling has been propelled by the ability to brag about how good you are on the internet, I can only begin to imagine the explosion of skill that would be set off if juggling made it into the Olympics. Let's make it happen!
Bart Hoving
Scoring Consultant
Born 1991. Started juggling in 1999. Joined local Youth Circus in 2003. Undefeated Dutch juggling champion in 2007 through 2009. Judge at WJF5 in 2008. Went to German National Circus School from 2009 through 2011. Full-time juggler and performer ever since, performed in over 20 countries. I started out as a hobby-juggler, not really interested in performing, and a little annoyed by “pro” performing jugglers selling themselves as world-class while seeing them end their routine with a sloppy 5 ball cascade. This all happened during the boom of juggling videos online. Thomas Dietz, Vova Galchenko, Jason Garfield, Anthony Gatto, Toby Walker, Wes Peden, and many more were dominating the space and raising the bar with one incredible video after another. Kids my age saw what was possible, and just started trying. This all led to young little jugglers - barely able to hold 4 clubs in 1 hand - flashing 7 clubs, while just a few years prior this was a feat reserved only for the elites. The visibility of the juggling community has inspired hundreds of kids like me to pursue juggling as either a hobby or as a career, and the WJF has certainly been a big part of said visibility. Juggling is a sport and skill, which could be in the Olympics, just like gymnastics. Breakdance has already been accepted into the realm of Olympic sports, and I firmly believe juggling can do the same. If juggling were to be accepted as an Olympic sport, just imagine how many little kids around the world could be inspired to become our very own Sir Roger Bannister and raise the bar to superhuman levels no one today could ever dream of.