Tessa Sophia Rapaczynski was born and raised in New York City, the daughter of two crazy lawyers whom she loves very much. She began her formal education at Columbia Greenhouse Nursery School in Morningside Heights, before entering kindergarten at Brearley on the Upper East Side. After attending boarding school at St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire, Tessa returned to New York where she graduated cum laude from Columbia University with a major in English and Comparative Literature. She has a master’s in modernist literature from Oxford.

A storyteller and artist seeking freedom and sunshine, Tessa moved to Los Angeles in 2012, where she worked briefly as an assistant at Warner Brothers in feature film development. Then, after a lifetime of striving for achievement within the context of elite institutions, she paradigm-shifted. She quit her job, sold or donated most of her stuff, and re-oriented her priorities toward mindfulness, creativity, and more free time to spend painting in her underwear. 

These days, Tessa’s short-term goal is finishing her narrative podcast about killer whales and climate change. Her long-term goal is to stay in good mental, physical, and spiritual health, so that she can keep evolving as an artist, friend, and human being.