About Cassidie
Cassidie Carmen Bates, MPP, is a researcher specializing in grief and bereavement leave, a public policy practitioner, a TEDx speaker, and a certified grief support specialist.
Her grief research has received multiple awards; she is a frequent panelist and moderator on grief-related topics, policy, advocacy, and lived expertise, and is regularly featured in the media and as a podcast guest.
Her work explores how bereavement leave policies are strengthened, in both pro-employer and pro-employee ways, when informed by the lived expertise of grievers, combined with subject-matter research. She researches the effects of grief on the brain and body, and how those insights can be interpreted through a policy lens so that more robust, grief-informed policies can be built to support grievers in the workplace.
With nearly a decade of public policy experience, she transitioned into grief policy following the sudden passing of her dad, John. At 25, Cassidie served as the sole executor of her dad’s estate, an experience that demonstrated how little infrastructure exists to support grieving workers, specifically for those with fiduciary roles.
CC’s GRIEF STORY
Cassidie had a rare bereavement leave experience, relative to many in the American workforce; she was able to cobble together her earned vacation and sick leave to, in essence, create the bereavement leave she needed, not the leave she was entitled to or that any of us are legally guaranteed in the United States. As an only child, and her dad not being married at the time he passed, Cassidie moved by herself to her dad’s home, in another state, at 25 years old, and largely taught herself how to settle an estate, with the support of a few very trusted professionals.
THE GRIEF JOURNEY EXPOSED THE GAPS IN OUR SYSTEMS, AND LED CC TO THIS…
In addition to her grief research, Cassidie is the Founder & CEO of Soul Executor, which provides tailored 1:1 estate navigation support for those with fiduciary responsibilities to their loved ones' estates, all in a grief-informed manner. She actively serves on the Board for various non-profits, in addition to leading the formation of multiple 501(c)(3)s in her non-profit consulting capacity. She’s currently the Community Engagement Director for Grieftastic Inc., co-producing the nation’s premier book fair for grief-specific authors.
BEFORE CC MET GRIEF
Cassidie spent over five years in nonprofit leadership within the Feeding America network, directing media, governmental partnerships, and a food security policy team with a scope of 18 counties, state, and federal advocacy. Named the 2023 California Hunger Fighter of the Year, Cassidie’s leadership in the public policy sector has been recognized consistently over the years. During this time, Cassidie developed and implemented award-winning legislative advocacy models, which integrated the expertise of those who have personally experienced food insecurity as a component of the qualitative evidence for the legislative efforts the Feeding America network was advocating for. These models were so effective in securing funding and bill passage, along with sustainable policy implementation that reflected the needs of those the policies are intended to serve, that Cassidie went on to direct the adoption of this client-centered advocacy model at dozens of nonprofits nationwide.
Cassidie earned her Master's of Public Policy (MPP) from the Duke Sanford School of Public Policy, where she conducted original research on grief and bereavement, served as Grieve Leave’s first Graduate Researcher, and established the first-of-its-kind grief support on Duke’s campus. She is an alumna of the University of California, Berkeley, with a B.A. in Legal Studies. While at Cal, she served as President of her Panhellenic sorority, gained membership to Prytanean, the oldest women’s collegiate honors society in the U.S., and participated in international research, respectively in Spain and then in Israel, Palestine, and Syria. She is a former Public Policy & International Affairs (PPIA) Fellow at the Goldman School of Public Policy.
Originally from the outskirts of Lake Tahoe, Nevada, Cassidie grew up with a love instilled for the outdoors and competed in downhill ski racing. Cassidie is working towards her goal of visiting each National Park, all 50 states, and every continent! She only has 19 of 63 national parks to go, six U.S. states left, and three continents remaining. She has a senior Pekingese, Missy, whom she rescued in 2019. She loves a lavender chai latte, running, crocheting, and reading. Cassidie lives in Sedona, Arizona - somewhere that’s remained her favorite location on earth for decades, no matter how much she travels and explores new places.