What is meant for you will always surround you even when you can’t see it. These are words I have lived by and have helped root my journey when things get rough. I return to my purpose over and over again even when I am feeling lost.

Hola lovely! My name is Cassandra Lopez Fradera, also known as Cass. This space is more than just a platform—it’s a tool for connection. Whether you are exploring my work as a communications consultant or seeking inspiration, my goal is to build meaningful relationships over the seas and internet.

It is in connection that I find echoes of a timeless human need to record, share and connect stories through symbols and language. The root of my work in communications, whether it is hosting a dialogue on an episode of Café con Cass or working directly with a client on their strategic needs is connection. The need to share stories and connect over time is seen as early as cave paintings and as recent and social media today. Universal truths are circular, not linear.

Although digital media is still new, the heart is ancient.

Instead of a traditional About Me page I am named this page Open Studio. An open studio is where an artist opens their studio for an event of specific time for public viewing. Because my work is driven by lived experience, it is inherently creative. It is no surprise that my exploration with language that began as a study of symbols has led me to petroglyphs and cave paintings with horses. It feels as though horses lift and carry me in the way I have lifted many people and organizations.

The horse nation has helped root me in a rapidly changing Puerto Rico. They are prey animals who move in a herd which makes my trauma informed approach and sensitivities of great use when humans often reject them. They teach me herd strategies that they have used over 55 millions while remaining rooted. Horses also give me the energy of connection which I have been missing since the world changed in 2020 and I left the global village of Harvard to go out on my own.

With the boom of tech that does not center people, my work has changed. Over the years, I have collaborated with youth organizations, political candidates, grassroots organizers, and movements focused on environmental sustainability, labor, science, healing, and disability justice across the Americas and Caribbean. Despite the challenges and changes, my first public access television concept, Women’s Voices had a mission that still serves me today.

Women’s Voice was pitched as a show that helped bring a voice to the voiceless. This wasn’t a concept that I invented, must like the media or slop we see today. It was a description of the person I was already becoming, years before clients, horses or language. I did not simply build my brand but I have lived inside of Café con Cass to the point that the work, even if the clients were not plenty and the money was tight, proved to be true and withstood whatever pandemic or manmade disaster was taking place.

I can say with confidence that my environment is starting to look more like my original pitch in the early 2000’s and I am excited to find new ways for the money to flow with it so I can one day have land of my own where my stories can rest and take new shape to reach a wider audience.