Tessy de Nassau gains Leader of the Year Award 2019
A former student at Richmond, Tessy de Nassau, has been awarded Leader of the Year 2019 by the Leadership Academy in Luxembourg. She was chosen for her passionate work in education and for being an inspirational female leader to many across the globe.
CEO of the Leadership Academy, Amadeusz Krol, said, “This accolade is a well-deserved recognition of an incredible female leader who sets an example and who spreads the genuine leadership attitude and principles that our Academy aims to convey to our candidates and community. We are very proud and honoured by our Leader of The Year!”
At the award presentation held in Luxembourg city recently, Tessy paid tribute to the late Grand Duke Jean – her former grandfather-in-law – who died earlier this year at the age of 98.
About the former head of state, Tessy said, “My late grandfather, His Royal Highness Grand Duke Jean, is my personal inspiring story of a leader. Let me take the stage for the first time since he passed away to publicly say how much he has inspired me; with his love towards me, and my children. His love towards his country and his people, and his love for everything he did.”
Tessy de Nassau graduated with a BA in International Relations from Richmond in 2014.
Tessy is founder and partner of the Global consultancy ‘finding Butterflies’. Some of her clients projects include the new global partnership with the Montessori St Nicholas Group in the UK and Vodafone global. Tessy is also the newly appointed associate at LSEideas at the London School of Economics.
Moreover, Tessy is an ambassador for UNAIDS (Global Advocate for Young Women and Adolescent Girls) and is the patron to UNA-UK. In the past, she spent five years in the Luxembourg military, during which she was deployed in Kosovo as a peacekeeper and only woman of her draft.
Tessy actively promotes a number of issues, including global health and women’s rights. She is passionate about pushing her different agendas to benefit the Sustainable Development Goals and has committed her time and energy to furthering the work of organisations in which she believes. Moreover, she is actively committed to strengthening basic human rights for all and empowering young women and adolescent girls around the world. She received the Woman of the Decade award from the Women Economic Forum in January 2017, the Humanities medal for spreading humanistic ideas worldwide and the Global Empowerment Award for her work in Africa.
In addition, Tessy is one of the co-founders and executive members at Professors without Borders, a social enterprise which, by providing university lecturers and professors, aims to make first class education available for students in developing countries without the need to go abroad. Two professors from Richmond, Associate Professor Charlie Dove-Edwin and Assistant Professor in Psychology, Dr Mark Horne, supported Professors Without Borders this summer by joining several other lecturers in Freetown, Sierra Leone to teach two week-long programmes featuring courses in finance, criminology, psychology, law and communications.
