Tessa graduated with an MPA in environmental science and policy from the School of International and Public Affairs in May 2022. As a Sustainable Investing Fellow, Tessa worked with the Investing With Impact team within the Global Investment Office (GIO) of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. She led a stakeholder consultation and a strategic reimagining of a key document that communicates the team’s approach to climate action investing while focusing on specific types of client segments — a brand new initiative across the Global Investment Office, for which her project would serve as a pilot. Tessa also worked on a comparison of sustainable funds classifications and was able to join GIO’s intensive summer analyst programming to gain exposure to the work of teams across the entire division.
Tessa’s first exposure to impact investing occurred while pursuing her graduate degree at SIPA, inspiring her to apply to the Morgan Stanley Sustainable Investing Fellowship program. Along with a team of three other students from both SIPA and SPS, Tessa participated in the IFC’s Impact Investing Challenge, where her team finished among the top three finalists for their proposal to issue a new type of sustainable bond that would earmark spending to a project with both environmental and social benefits, while a variable coupon rate would incentivize meeting a list of key project-related sustainability KPIs.
Prior to matriculating at SIPA, Tessa graduated in 2021 from Minerva University with a BSc in economics and society, where her unique curriculum enabled students to study in a new global city each semester: San Francisco, Seoul, Hyderabad, Berlin, Buenos Aires, London, and Taipei. Tessa’s undergraduate thesis focused on creating the world’s first draft of an Intergovernmental Glacial Protection Act, aimed at protecting glaciers in the Hindu-Kush Himalayas as precious stores of freshwater and as a meaningful dimension of the local landscape and spiritual practices. Tessa is a lifelong environmentalist, a member of Al Gore’s Climate Reality Leadership Corps, and a United World College alumna.