By: Ian Thomsen
Cassandra Friend wanted to stay in the Army. But her body insisted otherwise.
“You really start to think about the long-term implications of your actions,” says Friend, who suffered multiple back fractures while serving as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army’s armored tank unit. “How do I say I’m living a life in service of other people if I’m too prideful to admit it was time to find another way to serve people?”
Since leaving the Army in March 2023, Friend has become a fixture at Northeastern’s campus in Charlotte, North Carolina. She graduated last May from the accelerated nursing program while showing leadership on a variety of fronts (more on that in a moment).
She is currently enrolled full-time in nurse practitioner school and has started a consulting firm, Kavalyn Custom Solutions, that assists service members and injured veterans with understanding and navigation of their benefits, transitions from active service and other issues.
As if she weren’t busy enough, Friend continues to serve as a veteran military liaison for Northeastern students in Charlotte.
“One of the main focuses of Cassie’s role is to engage with our military-connected students,” says Andy McCarty, an Air Force veteran who directs the Dolce Center for the Advancement of Veterans and Servicemembers (CAVS) at Northeastern. “Unless these students self-identify, we may never know that [the military] is in their background.
