Meet Cassidy, a Diller alum from 2013! Cassidy lives in Tel Aviv and has found her second family in Israel.

Which program did you participate in and which year?
I participated in Diller Baltimore in 2013, and was a JC in 2014!

What are you up to now?
After college, I participated in a masa program called MITF for a year, and I knew that Israel was the place I needed to be and that I couldn’t picture myself anywhere else. So I made Aliyah about 6 years ago l, and currently live in Tel Aviv with my boyfriend and our puppy Cleo. I work at a high tech company called Loox where I do customer education and content marketing. I have made so many amazing friends and found a real community here that’s become my second family.

Looking back, how did your experience in Diller impact you?
Diller was a really important part of my journey with Israel. I remember meeting the Ashkelon fellows in 2013 and feeling such a strong connection to them, I wanted to understand and experience their lives that were so familiar in some ways, yet so different from mine. And when I was a JC the next year, Operation Protective edge started during our summer trip to Israel. While it was a difficult situation and scary at times, I found myself so consumed with how my Ashkelon friends were doing, and so frustrated by the way the world was reporting on what was happening. I think that’s when it clicked for me – that Israel was always going to be a huge part of my life and that I wanted to support it in the best way I could. And throughout college that pull to move to Israel and build a life here never went away. So here I am now!