Susan "Sue" Arbogast is an American Brazilian jiu-jitsu instructor recognized as one of the earliest women outside Brazil to earn a BJJ black belt. She is counted among the "female Dirty Dozen" — the first twelve non-Brazilian women to reach black belt — where she is generally listed as the eleventh. Her career is rooted in the Vermont and wider Northeast United States regional scene, away from the sport's larger coastal hubs.
Arbogast began training Brazilian jiu-jitsu in 1996 at a Carlson Gracie–affiliated academy led by Julio "Foca" Fernandez (full name Julio César Fernandez Nunes), a Carlson Gracie Sr. black belt who co-founded the BJJ Revolution Team. She rose through the ranks over the following decade — receiving her brown belt from Carlson Gracie Sr. — and was promoted to black belt by Fernandez in June 2006, placing her lineage as Carlson Gracie Sr. to Julio "Foca" Fernandez to Arbogast.
She is the founder and head instructor of Montpelier Martial Arts in Vermont, a BJJ Revolution Team affiliate academy; she founded her own school and is not a founder of the team itself, which was established by Fernandez and Rodrigo Medeiros. Across a long teaching career she has focused on developing local students, and she counts her students' competitive successes among the achievements she is most proud of.
No documented competition record exists for Arbogast, and her significance in the sport rests on her early black-belt promotion and her role in building a regional BJJ community rather than on tournament results. Her birth year is not publicly documented.