Mr. Andrew Telesca lives in Seat­tle, WA and has been fenc­ing at the Salle Saint-George since 2006. Andrew orig­i­nally began train­ing in clas­si­cal fenc­ing in 2001 with the study of the Ital­ian fenc­ing sys­tem of the Scuola Magis­trale Mil­itare di Roma under Mae­stro John Sullins. From 2002–2005 Andrew ran the Whit­man Clas­si­cal Fenc­ing Club under the guid­ance of Mae­stro Sullins. Also in 2003, he began train­ing with Mae­stro Ramón Martínez and Mae­stro Jean­nette Acosta-Martínez. By Jan­u­ary of 2012, he earned the rank of instruc­tor in North­ern Ital­ian duel­ing sabre through the Mar­tinez Acad­emy of Arms in New York. Andrew instructs in duel­ing sabre at Salle Saint-George as well as the finer points of mil­i­tary sabre.

Through fenc­ing Andrew has devel­oped a pas­sion for the com­bi­na­tion of dis­ci­pline, vigor, pre­ci­sion & intel­lect found in mar­tial arts. This led to a broader inter­est in the his­tor­i­cal aspects of mar­tial arts, and in par­tic­u­lar a desire to bet­ter under­stand how the con­text of a mar­tial art – that is, its pur­pose within the soci­ety in which it devel­oped – affects its teach­ing and prac­tice. This inter­est has been fur­ther fueled while train­ing in other mar­tial sys­tems, such as Navaja and Nin­jutsu. Andrew has since come to believe that the great major­ity of per­sonal con­flicts can be resolved more eas­ily if the effort is made to dis­cern the con­text of both par­ties’ arguments.

Out­side of the salle, Andrew is a Sys­tems Engi­neer at The Boe­ing Com­pany. He holds a B.A. summa cum laude in Math­e­mat­ics from Whit­man Col­lege, a grad­u­ate cer­tifi­cate in Sus­tain­able Enter­prise Man­age­ment from Willamette Uni­ver­sity, a pro­fes­sional cer­tifi­cate in Deci­sion Analy­sis from Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity and is cur­rently pur­su­ing a master’s degree in Sys­tems Archi­tect­ing and Engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­sity of South­ern California.