Tess is a candidate in the Master of Science in Foreign Service program, concentrating in Global Politics and Security and pursuing a certificate in African Studies. Her academic and professional interests include conflict prevention and stabilization, migration and refugee policy, and the political economy of conflict in Africa.

Tess currently interns at the Department of State in the Bureau of Conflict Stabilization Operations, Office of African Affairs. She serves on the West Africa team and is focused on conflict prevention in littoral West Africa. Additionally, she spent her summer (2022) interning in the Bureau of African Affairs at the Department of State. Before studying at Georgetown, Tess worked at Search for Common Ground and the Africa Center for Strategic Studies.

Tess graduated summa cum laude from the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she received a B.A. in International Affairs and minors in French and Spanish. During her undergraduate career, she studied abroad in Rwanda and Uganda and conducted research in Northern Uganda on community reconciliation and the reintegration of formerly abducted women and girls into the Lord’s Resistance Army.