About

Among Jack Cassell’s earliest memories of American University is the apartment the school rented his family when he was about four years old. His father, Stafford H. “Pop” Cassell, CAS/BA ‘36, had been a student there, then a coach, then athletic director, then vice president. AU called him the Father of AU Athletics.

He died six years later. Jack was ten. Pop’s colleagues at the university looked after his widow, Carolyn, and the rest of the family. The institution did not step back. It stepped in.

Cassell grew up on that campus and chose to attend AU, where he was the starting goalkeeper for the Eagles men’s soccer team from 1974 to 1977. He graduated from the School of Communication in 1977. The honor he has talked about most from those years is not a result. It is a letter jacket, which mattered because it reminded him of his father, who wore his own AU letter jacket around campus on weekends.

Visual Aids Electronics

After a brief run in goal for the Washington Diplomats reserve team, Cassell asked his mentor, former Dean of Students Edward “Ned” Boehm, for advice. Boehm pointed him toward a rental technician position at Visual Aids Electronics. He started out delivering equipment.

He learned every position in the company, was elevated to president in 1984, and bought it outright in 1986. He ran it for thirty-six years. Under his ownership, VAE and its subsidiary Conference Systems, Inc. grew from three offices and twenty-five employees into a national company with eighty-three offices and more than a thousand people. Its clients included the Office of the President of the United States, the Department of State, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, and NATO.

In November 2013 he sold all outstanding shares of VAE to Presentation Services, then controlled by Goldman Sachs and the largest audiovisual rental business in the world.

Cassell Global Investments

He founded Cassell Global Investments in 2013, based in Palm Beach County, and has served as its president and chief executive since. CGI takes majority positions in operating businesses — services, security, communications and infrastructure — and holds commercial and residential real estate in the United States and Brazil.

CGI Brasil holds a 50 percent interest in Vertix Telcom and a 47 percent interest in Mac Audio, two communications companies serving Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Both provide equipment and technical support to major events across South America, including Formula One and Carnival. Cassell serves as chairman of both.

He was chairman of Active Shooter Response, LLC, acquired by SOS Technologies in 2022. In 2024, as chairman of Vortex Security Solutions, he led the sale of that company to Guardian Security of Pennsylvania.

American University

Cassell joined the AU Board of Trustees in 2003 and served as its chairman from 2015 to 2019. He was given the title of chair emeritus in 2021 and remains a trustee and a member of the board’s executive committee. He chaired the board’s athletics committee for six years.

In 2013 the university opened Cassell Hall, an eight-floor residence building, named in recognition of three million dollars in gifts from Cassell, his wife Denise, and the Cassell family. The fitness center inside carries the name of his twin brother, Stafford H. Cassell Jr.

Barry Goldberg Court

In the fall of 2019, Jack and Denise Cassell committed three million dollars to American University. It was the first gift toward what became the Alan and Amy Meltzer Center for Athletic Performance. They used it to name the volleyball court after Barry Goldberg.

Goldberg coached AU volleyball for thirty-four seasons and was the winningest coach in the university’s history. The two families had been friends for years. In 2019 he was inducted into the Pop Cassell Hall of Fame, the only active coach ever to receive that recognition. He was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer in February 2022 and kept coaching through treatment. That October, Cassell and then-President Sylvia Burwell told Barry and his family in person that the court would carry his name. He died the following March, at age 61. The court was dedicated on February 13, 2026, with his widow Bonnie, their children and grandchildren, and former players present.

Pop Cassell Hall of Fame

On January 31, 2026, Jack Cassell was inducted into the Stafford H. “Pop” Cassell Hall of Fame as a lifetime contributor. The hall of fame has existed since 1969, is endowed by the Cassell family, and is named for his father. He was the first of four presented that evening, introduced by President Emeritus Neil Kerwin. The ceremony was held in the Meltzer Center, the building he brought to the Board of Trustees for approval as chairman and to which he gave the inaugural gift.