Tessa Harrington was “jittery” with nerves when she sat down with Housing Today for her Frontline Stories interview. It is however probably among the least anxiety-inducing things she has experienced.

 “You can’t beat traveling in a van with 10 people… we all slept on top of each other” she laughs after the initial nervousness subsides.

“New England is beautiful, absolutely astonishingly beautiful. I’ve never felt cold like it in January, it was absolutely breathtaking.”

She speaks dreamily of her 2012 road trip as a mature student in the New England region of the United States. She travelled to Mississippi to help clear up the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, one of the five deadliest hurricanes to ever strike the US.