Tesicca Truong

Tesicca was an Environmental Science Honours student, minoring in Environmental Education. Her passions lie at the intersection of sustainability, youth empowerment and community building. She was named on Starfish’s Canada’s Top-25 Environmentalists Under 25 in both 2013 and 2014, and was awarded the 2015 Greenest City Leadership Award with the City of Vancouver.

During high school, she helped organize two Plan-It Earth conferences that allowed students to connect with city planners and promote urban sustainability.

Shortly after that, she launched the Churchill Youth4Tap movement to encourage students to drink tap water instead of bottled water through policy, infrastructural and behavioral change. Within a year, her team fundraised and installed three water refill stations, sold over 100 reusable water bottles, and negotiated the removal of bottled water from her school’s vending machines. The movement grew to become the Vancouver Youth4Tap coalition and resulted in the installation of water refill stations at every public high school in Vancouver.

In January 2013, she organized the Vancouver School Board’s first-ever Sustainability Conference to educate, empower and connect students, teachers, and parents to sustainability issues within the district.

During her first year at SFU, Tesicca became the youngest member on the Mayor of City of Vancouver’s Engaged City Task Force. She also chaired the Board of Sustainable SFU and the Environmental Representative for SFU Senate and the Simon Fraser Student Society.

Academically, she participated in ‘Change Lab’ — a course that encourages students to develop sustainability projects and co-founded Play without Plastics, an intergenerational environmental education program. She hopes to continue to engage her community while working on an academic project.

She completed her degree in June 2018 and was the recipient of the Dean's Medal.

Feel free to connect with her at ttruong@sfu.ca.