Tessa C. Petrich

For the last three-and-a-half years, Tessa C. Petrich ’07 has played the role of party planner, event organizer, and gracious hostess. Now is Harvard ready for a fun czarina?

Petrich has a long resume of fun.

“I prefer to be backstage than on it,” Petrich says about her work with Harvard fashion show Eleganza, in which she served as fashion director, creative director, and most recently, executive producer. “I like creating an opportunity for others to have fun.”

Since her freshman year, Petrich has been a social-event dynamo. She started her freshman fall as chair of the First-Year Social Committee and “hosting awesome themed-parties in my room in Hurlbut,” she says.

She’s moved on from organizing Costume Catwalks with the FYSC to a bigger project: the soon-to-open King’s Head Pub. As chair of the Pub Night Commission and the College Events Board, Petrich has worked with the project manager of Loker Commons planning and program development, former Campus Life Fellow Zac A. Corker ’04, and the Undergraduate Council to create events where students can get their party on.

Nor is Petrich a stranger to the pages of FM. She designs her own clothes, and she won FM’s Project Runway Challenge by constructing a sassy backless dress and matching jacket out of less than $8 worth of Garment District trash-turned-treasure.

Post-graduation, Petrich hopes to work creatively, although she isn’t sure how. “I’m a little bit all over the place,” she says, “but I’m definitely not worried about the future.”

In the meantime, she’s also a manager of the Hilles Café, where she started Tuesday acoustic nights under manager of the Student Organization Center at Hilles David R. Friedrich.

“I am obsessed with the Quad,” she says, enthusiastically. “Please write that down. It has been absolutely phenomenal.”