Tessa Simonds

Tessa was born in 2000, and while that makes her technically 16 years old, she is wise beyond her years because she’s packed a lot in: travel, soccer, and many batches of terrible brownies which she eats anyway, because, duh, brownies. She is a second year student at One Stone, a radically different independent high school in Boise, Idaho. Her learning experience is deeply rooted in design thinking, affording the opportunity to practice mindsets helpful to hacking adulthood: bias towards action, fail forward, bring optimism, and embrace ambiguity. Currently, she is interning with the first woman Director of the Idaho Commerce Department, which includes a wide array of opportunities and responsibilities. Tessa is unlike the stereotype of a typical teen, though she does snap the occasional chat.

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