Class Note 2022
Issue
May-June 2026
Class Note 2022. A government and Latin American studies major at Dartmouth, Cassandra (Cassie) Thomas didn’t have to look far for her first post-graduation adventure. Selected for a Lombard public service fellowship through the Dickey Center, she joined the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in San José, Costa Rica, an agency under the UN.
Costa Rica is both a destination and a transition country for migrants. More than 500,000 in transit passed through in 2023, the year Cassie joined IOM, and many have recently navigated the Darién Gap—the jungle separating Colombia and Panama. Among other development and capacity building work, IOM provides food, water, shelter, and sanitation to migrants in transit; other services are available for migrants and host institutions in Costa Rica. Cassie was a generalist in the program support team and worked on many different tasks across communications, data analytics, and grant writing. At the same time, the interdisciplinary nature of migration also allowed her to observe broader issues such as counter-trafficking, climate policy, and gender equity, all connected to the movement of people across the region.
When her one-year fellowship ended in September 2024, the mission was thriving and extended her a return offer. Six months later, however, everything was turned upside down when the U.S. foreign aid and development policy shifted sharply toward reducing overseas spending and tightening immigration-related funding. Under extreme financial and operational uncertainty, the programs changed, budgets shrank, and Cassie’s contract was terminated in April 2025.
Suddenly without her professional support network in a foreign country, Cassie turned once again to Dartmouth’s fellowship office and received the Reynolds scholarship, a one-year grant supporting graduate enrollment or independent research. In September 2025 she moved to Rome, Italy.
As a Reynolds scholar, she now studies a blended peripheral neighborhood where population movement is the most dynamic in Rome. Her research focuses on Bangladeshi and Filipino migrants, whose work in crucial sectors sustains a Roman community facing aging demographics and economic strain.
The interactive nature of her current research echoes one of her last classes at Dartmouth, Migrant Lives and Labor in the Upper Valley with professor Douglas Moody, where she connected directly with the locals and learned about their day-to-day challenges with the U.S. healthcare and legal systems. In Costa Rica, while IOM supported thousands of migrants, the large scale of the work meant that Cassie did not get the opportunity to focus on the individual migrant cases or stories. In Rome, she has rediscovered the hands-on, creative spark that first drew her to migration studies.
Cassie’s journey is one of curiosity and tenacity finding space to thrive. Her passion for migration—and its intersections with climate, geopolitics, and gender—reminds me of the best of our liberal arts education. The twists and turns of the past few years have only proven her ability to find creativity and impact in open-ended challenges, and I’m excited to see what she’s up to after her year in Rome.
In other news, huge congratulations to Maria Roodnitsky and Jordan Pollock (McGill ’16) on their engagement! The couple lives in San Francisco and got engaged in French Polynesia late last year.
—Louisa Gao, 154 E 29th St., New York, NY 10016; louisa.gao0922@gmail.com
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More of 2022 Class Notes
Costa Rica is both a destination and a transition country for migrants. More than 500,000 in transit passed through in 2023, the year Cassie joined IOM, and many have recently navigated the Darién Gap—the jungle separating Colombia and Panama. Among other development and capacity building work, IOM provides food, water, shelter, and sanitation to migrants in transit; other services are available for migrants and host institutions in Costa Rica. Cassie was a generalist in the program support team and worked on many different tasks across communications, data analytics, and grant writing. At the same time, the interdisciplinary nature of migration also allowed her to observe broader issues such as counter-trafficking, climate policy, and gender equity, all connected to the movement of people across the region.
When her one-year fellowship ended in September 2024, the mission was thriving and extended her a return offer. Six months later, however, everything was turned upside down when the U.S. foreign aid and development policy shifted sharply toward reducing overseas spending and tightening immigration-related funding. Under extreme financial and operational uncertainty, the programs changed, budgets shrank, and Cassie’s contract was terminated in April 2025.
Suddenly without her professional support network in a foreign country, Cassie turned once again to Dartmouth’s fellowship office and received the Reynolds scholarship, a one-year grant supporting graduate enrollment or independent research. In September 2025 she moved to Rome, Italy.
As a Reynolds scholar, she now studies a blended peripheral neighborhood where population movement is the most dynamic in Rome. Her research focuses on Bangladeshi and Filipino migrants, whose work in crucial sectors sustains a Roman community facing aging demographics and economic strain.
The interactive nature of her current research echoes one of her last classes at Dartmouth, Migrant Lives and Labor in the Upper Valley with professor Douglas Moody, where she connected directly with the locals and learned about their day-to-day challenges with the U.S. healthcare and legal systems. In Costa Rica, while IOM supported thousands of migrants, the large scale of the work meant that Cassie did not get the opportunity to focus on the individual migrant cases or stories. In Rome, she has rediscovered the hands-on, creative spark that first drew her to migration studies.
Cassie’s journey is one of curiosity and tenacity finding space to thrive. Her passion for migration—and its intersections with climate, geopolitics, and gender—reminds me of the best of our liberal arts education. The twists and turns of the past few years have only proven her ability to find creativity and impact in open-ended challenges, and I’m excited to see what she’s up to after her year in Rome.
In other news, huge congratulations to Maria Roodnitsky and Jordan Pollock (McGill ’16) on their engagement! The couple lives in San Francisco and got engaged in French Polynesia late last year.
—Louisa Gao, 154 E 29th St., New York, NY 10016; louisa.gao0922@gmail.com