Tessa bridges somatic awareness and healing techniques, ritual and depthful personal experience with professional training.

Completing her BA in International Studies with a focus on Asian cultural practices of bodily veiling from Leiden University. She continued her studies in the field of Organizational Anthropology and graduated from VU University (MSc) on the influence of visible difference in the workplace with her groundbreaking and personal ethnographic research in which she used Instagram as an anthropological field to study individuals with facial difference by sharing her own story. Her academic graduation gave birth to To Face The World, and transferred qualitative anthropological and psychologal research into her therapeutic practice through coaching, mentoring and teaching.

She has studied extracurricular tracks in human flourishing, Buddhist rethoric, account of beauty and aesthetics, philosophy and positive phychology as well as studied and trained in/as an Ayurvedic nutrionist, emotional wellbeing coach, Jungian archetypal psychology, feminine spiritual/sexual alchemy, marma skin therapy, epigenetics, kashmir shavism, vipassana, and is a 12+ years yogic practictioner mainly in the ashtanga method.

With her personal medical journey and  risk of losing eyesight coupled with her facial birthmark, Tessa has found profound ground, presence and inner flourishing to live wholeheartedly through these modalities of healing. She continues to deepen her devotional practice daily

The union of study and practice has resulted in her inspiring and grounded method of deepening into the deeper layers of beauty.
A method that is psychosomatically oriented to evoking inner wisdom. Since 2019, Tessa has guided individuals from all corners of the globe and has taught groups on beauty, visibility, belonging and body intimacy in private mentorship, keynote speaking, university teaching and writing. 

Her first book on her life path with a visible facial difference was published on September 20th, 2022.

Tessa runs her practice from Amsterdam, The Netherlands, where she is born and based. She is a lover of sculpting, ceramics, reading and dance as creative self-expression and can often be found on the shores of Portugal's wild coasts.