Hi! I’m Tessa.

I am a Historical Fiction writer working on my debut novel. I write a blog called The Salty Sea Siren, where I talk about my travels, my work, and memories of my life growing up as the daughter of a sailor in a rural farming community in Northern California. You can find my series on Medium, also covering this topic.

I am a cultural storyteller specializing in storytelling for community engagement to integrate community knowledge, and empower culture centered community involved research.

I founded a successful community-based consulting company,

Cultural Wisdom®, with my husband,

Roberto Dansie, PhD.

Our work seeks to empower community-based, non-profit organizations, indigenous communities, rural farmworker communities, communities of color, people dealing with poverty, traumatized and underserved population’s health and educational needs.

We build healthy, resilient, green-powered, trauma-informed, and culturally inclusive communities. We are based in Beaverton, Oregon, but we work across communities in the U.S., mostly in the Pacific Northwest and in Nebraska, Minnesota, and North Dakota on native community resilience.

We create innovative solutions to complex issues to create equity in healthcare to address the specific needs of the rural farmworker community; advocating, building community, and creating greater access to care, with less barriers to care such as cultural liaisons, community health workers, and Promotores de Saud (promoters of health), which is a program we have been innovating in the United States for the past thirty years. Roberto’s work with the CDC’s and National Institutes of Health Crash Course in Cultural Competency in The National Library of Medicine is a testament to his transformative educational style. 

We have worked with Migrant Education, Head Start, and other Migrant and Seasonal Farmworker organizations including federally funded rural health clinics in collaboration with our efforts.

I am a Stanford University School of Medicine Health Equity Ambassador. This professional development program provides training in research and selected health equity topics to a cohort of community members. This is a community building, research, and health equity driven program and is an example of the innovative use of education by Stanford University, as well as showing a commitment to fostering collaboration in community-led research into the impacts of climate change on cancer and health equity. This approach values the lived experiences of the communities served within the Stanford Catchment Area. This recognizes community members as the experts. It allows for community members and advocates to be trained in facilitating research that will result in positive outcomes for the community and greater access to information about their social determinants of health, individually and collectively.

We build capacity around climate resilience and community-based solutions. It provides access to funding for research, networking for expanded resource sharing, and fundraising capabilities. There is often very little research available for rural farmworker communities regarding their health disparities, this creates a cycle of disparity due to the need for research data to access funding for further research and healthcare access. I am proud and inspired to be a Health Equity Ambassador for Stanford University School of Medicine. 
One example of our innovative approach to community engagement is an unusual program Roberto created, the second needle exchange program in the nation to address addiction as it relates to HIV through the Boulder County Health Department. He has continued to lead the work for HIV & Communities of Color, with National Minority Education and Howard University College of Medicine.  Arizona Public Media’s special report on Roberto’s work “How Cultural Sensitivity Can Improve Health Care”  and the PBS interview at University of Arizona with Dr. Sally Reel about his work in rural health, “Culture and Care” speak to the relevance of culture as a part of health and healing.

If you are interested in my work, please fill out the form below.

Let’s plant the seeds of hope for community resiliency together!