Cassie is a director, writer, and filmmaker whose work across stage and screen is playful, experimental, and unapologetically DIY. Originally from Minnesota, she studied directing at Columbia College Chicago. Cassie’s directing practice is shaped by her roots in improv and sketch comedy, which led her to direct for The Second City National Touring Company, teach improv and sketch across the country, and run an indie comedy club out of the unfinished basement of a Chicago brownstone.

Since moving to Los Angeles in 2019, she has served as an acting coach on over 50 episodes of television with Nickelodeon (Side Hustle, The Thundermans, That Girl Lay Lay) and directed new works at The Elysian Theater (Widdle Women, Shipping, Fanny, Todd Macabre). Her original musical, The Mountain Digby, was a finalist for the National Alliance of Musical Theatre (2023, 2025), the Steller Emerging Creator Award (2021), and an honorable mention for the American Playwriting Foundation’s Relentless Award (2025).

In 2024, Cassie spent a week at Mount St. Helens with the Association of Women Geoscientists, learning about volcanoes, hiking mountains, and recording audio. The resulting docu-podcast, The Blast Zone, was piloted with NPR and Atlas Obscura. At present, she is celebrating an international award–winning festival run of her film, Boy Band in a Haunted Hotel, which was written by, and stars adults with developmental disabilities.

As a teacher, Cassie has worked with students ages 4 to 80, from beginners to professionals, including a few businesspeople held hostage by “corporate team building.” She’s passionate about teaching adults how to play, and children how to care for themselves and each other.

In her free time, Cassie volunteers as a Fire Lookout in the Angeles National Forest, and spends her vacations fishing in northern Minnesota (in case you had any doubts about how midwestern she is.)