TESSA MORTENSEN
By Ana de Villa Singson
TESSA MORTENSEN
It’s easy to mistake Tessa for a woman of leisure. She has that confident ebullience and bravura of a society doyenne. But there’s so much more than meets the eye with Tessa.
Tessa co-chaired the very successful 2019 AAA golf tournament. Along with her co – head, she campaigned for a plethora of sponsorships that yielded AAA’s most profitable golf event! This she managed to do while jetting to different parts of the globe to meet with family, testament to her transatlantic organizational skills.
Tessa and I also worked together in Magnificart, AAA’s first online auction. When we decided to widen our auction selections to include items for the home, Tessa diligently raided her attic…and what a treasure trove of items that yielded! She offered antique Oriental jars, vases, chairs, crystal glasses, tribal antiquities from Palawan; all at rock bottom giveaway prices to help the auction. And when the committee decided to cut costs on operational expenses in order to maximize the net proceeds for AAA’s charities, she readily offered to deliver auction items to winning bidders, saving us from paying exorbitant transport costs!
During Board and committee meetings, Tessa had a regular refrain which piqued my curiosity. She would always say that she couldn’t commit to any activity on a certain day of the week. It was only recently that I discovered why. Every Wednesday, Tessa is completely incommunicado because she is busy cooking and supervising the preparation of hundreds of meal packs for Kusina ng Pag-Ibig, a feeding program she runs with 3 of her bosom buddies from Batch 68. With a mantra of “When There is a Need, We Feed!”, Tessa and friends have provided meal packs for thousands in Tondo, Malibay, et al. It’s no easy feat as Tessa wakes up regularly at 4 a.m. to supervise cooking, packing, sending off of her weekly meal packs. And it tells me what I knew all along: Tessa has heart of gold!
May you continue to help the needy, Tessa, and may the love you stamp into everything you do, come back to you a thousandfold! Hail and farewell…we miss you already!