Cassie hails from San Bernardino, California, and graduated in 2019 from Princeton University with an A.B. in politics and certificates in East Asian studies and the history and practice of diplomacy. She spent spring 2018 studying abroad at Doshisha University in Kyoto with the Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies, concentrating on Japanese language and politics. She interned at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Washington, D.C., a Japanese foreign policy think tank, taking part in research on U.S.-Japan issues and helping facilitate U.S.-Japan exchange events. Cassie also worked in Princeton’s Office of International Programs as a communications assistant and volunteered as a global ambassador. She was named a Blakemore Freeman Fellow in 2019, and studied advanced Japanese in Yokohama at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies, administered by Stanford University, during the 2019-2020 academic year. In the fall of 2020, Cassie returned to Princeton to begin her MPA studies as a SINSI fellow. For her summer internship, she worked at the State Department, Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Japan Desk. Following the completion of her MPA, Cassie hopes to pursue a career in the foreign service.