Meet Cassandra - All in Always

Continuing “Our Future Is in Good Hands, Your Next-Gen Leaders” series, highlighting a select few extraordinary young leaders I’ve had the honor of watching grow, today’s spotlight is different and deeply personal. 

Not just because today’s post is about my daughter, Cassandra Vogel, but because the story I want to tell isn’t just about being proud, it’s about being inspired.

Cassandra recently graduated from Skidmore College, not just with academic honors, but with a quiet transformation forged through service, language, and global connection. While many pulled inward during these uncertain times, she pushed outward, serving as an RA, peer health educator, and working with our California State Senators as a state government intern. 

But perhaps one of her boldest choices came when she decided not to just study abroad, but to immerse herself for an entire year in Madrid. Every course taken in Spanish. A host family that spoke no English. A curriculum where you were sent home if they even heard English spoken.  No shortcuts.  She immersed fully in the language, culture, people, and the pulse of everyday life. She didn’t come back just fluent in Spanish, she came back expanded in empathy, in clarity, and in global connection. 

And true to form, she didn’t stop there, she chose to do it all over again. Just weeks after graduation, she headed back to the East Coast is currently immersing herself in Middlebury’s intensive French program, one of the most rigorous language programs in the country. Cassandra realized that language is more than communication, it’s connection, diplomacy, and an opportunity to understand  others at the deepest level.

Cassandra, you’ve taught me just as much as I’ve ever hoped to teach you.  I am endlessly inspired by your courage, your curiosity, and your heart. You are, in every sense, my greatest joy. Our world is and will be a better place because you are in it.