Meet Sunny Choi, the Estée Lauder director who left corporate America to become an Olympic breaker

Choi was born in Tennessee on November 10, 1988, and though she was originally named Grace, she's gone by the nickname Sunny since birth.

Her family relocated to Louisville, Kentucky, when she was young.

The fourth child and only daughter of Korean immigrants, Choi told ESPN she struggled to fit in as a child.

"I didn't speak Korean well, dressed American, and brought Korean and American foods for school lunch. I had a bit of an inferiority complex, which I didn't realize until recently. That's probably one of the things that made me want to get out of Kentucky," she said.

ESPN reported that Choi became obsessed with gymnastics after watching the women's all-around competition during the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona.

Per the outlet, Choi continued training "25 hours per week" throughout high school and even joined the gymnastics team at the University of Pennsylvania, but she was forced to quit the sport after tearing her ACL her freshman year.

In 2023, BI reported that Choi "stumbled" into breaking after seeing people dance while walking around campus at night.

There, she was able to watch B-boys and B-girls flip, spin, and freeze in acrobatic positions.

"It was a love-hate relationship because I was super shy. I used to sit in the corner and watch everyone else dance," Choi told reporter Yoonji Han. "But I knew it was something I really wanted to do."

According to LinkedIn, Choi worked as the director of global creative operations for skincare at Estée Lauder from March 2021 to January 2023 while also continuing to train as a breaker.

"I was always sacrificing," Choi told BI. "As much as I say that job was just a paycheck, I still wanted to make sure I was doing my very best with that job, so I was working really really long hours."

She said a typical day started with a 6 a.m. training session, followed by six to eight hours of meetings, practice, and more work, with little time for meals and sleep.

"It was just extremely exhausting, and I kept burning out, and I kept kind of like having these really low dips in mood and things like that, so when they announced the Olympics, initially I was hesitant just because I put so much of me into getting to where I'd got in the corporate world," she said.

Choi added that it "took a really long time" to decide to quit her corporate career.

"I knew that the Olympics was a childhood dream, so it took some time to figure out what it was that was really stopping me and then figuring out whether it was actually worth not going for my dreams," she said. "Turns out it wasn't worth it, so I quit."

Her other awards include silver medals at the 2019 World Championships, 2019 World Urban Games, and the World Games 2022, Team USA reported.

Choi also won gold at the Breaking For Gold USA regional competition in 2023 and the Pan American Games, the Associated Press reported.

Breaking music is picked live by a DJ, so Choi said everyone prepares differently.

She said she choreographs 20% to 30% of her routines, and the rest is freestyle.

Olympics.com reported that breakers' moves fall into three elements: top rock, down rock, and freezes.

Top rock refers to moves done while standing, such as a Crossover Step or an Outlaw Two-Step, while down rock refers to the moves done on the floor that we commonly associate with this style of dance. Down rock includes various power moves like the air flare, in which "breakers balance on one hand, then the other, as they spin their legs around through the air, passing them under their hands," per the Olympics.

Finally, freezes are when the breaker completely stops moving, typically in a "difficult-to-hold, acrobatic position."

"I just make sure I hit some notes for technical difficulty and stuff like that, but then outside of that, whatever song comes on, you just kind of connect and go," she said. "It adds this element of surprise because the thing is, we don't even know what's going to happen, so how could the audience know what's going to happen?"

Choi said breaking is also different from other sports because it doesn't have "a traditional history of having coaches."

"So I go to practice, and I pick everything I'm going to do. I plan out my sessions every single day, and then even then, it's like I go to a lot of community centers, and so they open and close when they want. Sometimes I have to book my own studios. And the people I practice with change. Nobody's telling me what to do," Choi said.

However, she does have a strength and conditioning coach she sees three times a week, and she recently started working with someone to help her breaking, but she said she's still scheduling everything on her own.

Choi told BI that one way she balances the mental side of competition is by working with a therapist.

She described dancing as "a form of self-expression" and "a creative art form" that you have to be present for to perform well.

"And so when you have personal blocks in your life, whatever that may be, they show up in your dancing," Choi said. "So working through a lot of my mental health issues and then working through the sports psychology piece in combination, like together, with my therapist has been super helpful."

Choi said she likes to take 10 seconds between tasks to check in with herself and ask questions like, "Am I draining myself too far so that I'm not going to have energy for practice tonight?" or "At this point, do I need to fuel or do I have energy to keep going?"

She added, "It's great because that 10 seconds literally makes no difference in anyone's life. If you're already late, 10 seconds isn't going to make a difference, but 10 seconds makes a huge difference for you because when you stop, you can check in on your internal battery."

Choi described herself as "a health nut" who likes to be really careful about what she eats to give herself the proper fuel as an athlete. One thing she likes to avoid is refined sugar.

Choi has a partnership with Blume, and said she prefers the brand's SuperBelly Gut-Building Hydration Powder packets.

"It's super great because I can just carry those in my bag. I literally like carry them everywhere just in case," she added.

The women's and men's breaking competitions will take place on August 9 and 10, respectively, and are structured like a tournament.

In Choi's case, 16 B-girls will be divided into four groups of four, and the breakers in each group will compete against each other in a "round robin format," according to the Olympics.

Two winners will be selected from each of the four groups and seeded into a bracket to begin the knock-out rounds. The breakers in the bracket then compete in "battles," each consisting of three rounds, or "throw-downs," in which one breaker performs for a minute, and the other "responds" with their own one-minute performance, according to the Olympics.

A panel of judges scores each round based on technique, vocabulary, execution, musicality, and originality using a "digital slider" rather than numbers, so they'll slide toward who they think is winning the round in each category. The balance of these sliders determines the winner of each round.

Choi said she hopes those who watch breaking at the Olympics "can just be present and pick a favorite dancer" and enjoy themselves.

"Just connect with what's happening and like not overthink it because I think it can be a really, really fun time for everybody," she added.