Speaker's Profile

Tessa (she/her) has a personal connection to mental health, having grown up with severe anxiety and experiencing the lack of resources in schools. This inspired her to found Upstream Education, which equips teachers with the tools to help students manage anxiety and foster well-being.Tessa earned her B.S. in Social Entrepreneurship from the Watson Institute at Lynn University and holds a 200-hour yoga teacher certification from Strala Yoga. In 2016, she won the Denver Public Schools Imaginarium Innovation Lab's Design Challenge for her idea to create a curriculum of bite-sized, Tier 1 Mental Health tools for high school students. The following year, her first book, I Am Tessa, was published by One Idea Press.She often speaks on the topics of adolescent mental health, social entrepreneurship, and teacher professional development for organizations like Teach For America, Denver Public Schools, and the University of Notre Dame. In 2021, she delivered her TEDx talk, “The Power of 5 Minutes for Youth Mental Health.”Tessa has been recognized as a 2024 Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and a 2024 HopeLab Young Innovator in Behavioral Health awardee. In her spare time, she enjoys hiking and exploring Colorado with her husband. Tessa resides in Boulder.