As a child, when Tessy Pumaccahua and her mother came to the United States from Peru, she never imagined going to college. She and her mother lived in poverty, were homeless for a while, and sold cakes outside a local church to make ends meet.

Today, Tessy is a graduate student at California State University, San Bernardino in the psychology master's program and is researching treatment for ADHD. She has served as a summer intern at the Harvard Medical School and at UCLA and is a Ronald E. McNair Scholar, and a Minority Access to Research and Research in Minority Institutes Scholar. She was awarded the Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award, and received the Sally Casanova California Predoctoral Fellowship.

In 2010, Tessy was elected president of the CSUSB chapter of Psi Psi Chi, the national honor society in psychology. She has volunteered as a crisis counselor, a youth mentor and behavioral interventionist in the Inland Empire.

Tessy plans to obtain a doctoral degree with the goal of becoming a professor of psychology.