After working in Finance & Accounting for 10 years, our Founder Lusiana Hadi finally had the courage to follow her heart and leave her comfort zone in Finance & Accounting to go into the Social Impact field. She has always loved animals, especially dogs and cats. After learning about animal welfare and the world-wide overpopulation issue of companion pets, she started donating to various shelters. When that was not enough she started holding individual online fundraising for the dogs in need and volunteering virtually at a couple 501c3 animal rescue organizations based in LA. As part of her way of switching into the Social Impact field, she attended the part-time MBA program at UCLA Anderson to pursue an MBA (Masters in Business) with a concentration in Social Impact. Lusiana Hadi founded BARK Rescue CA toward the end of her first year at the part-time MBA program at UCLA Anderson. At the time she was also working full time as a Content Creation Project Manager and AAPI Program Coordinator at a non-profit organization in the mental health space. Lusiana talked to a couple of her classmates at UCLA Anderson about her idea of founding this organization. In support of her vision and mission, they agreed to be a BARK Board Member and a BARK Volunteer. Her husband also agreed to be a BARK advisor. As the state of CA requires a non-profit organization to have 3 board members to receive the 501c3 (tax-exempt) status, Lusiana’s colleagues from the other non-profit organizations where she was working agreed to complete BARK’s board membership.
At the start of her second year in the part-time MBA program at UCLA Anderson, Lusiana decided to leave the MBA program and her full time job and focused on building BARK Rescue CA. It was not until March 2022 that BARK Rescue CA started getting more active volunteers. Ever since, BARK Rescue CA has been building its team of amazing volunteers whose contributions have helped BARK Rescue to be able to actively rescuing dogs from the euthanasia list at a partner shelter in Stanislaus County at the end of March 2022. In BARK Rescue’s first 4 months, we have rescued 16 abandoned dogs into foster homes and placed 11 of them in loving forever homes.
We are in constant need of funding, fosters and volunteers so that we can save more dogs in our future. Please consider donating, fostering, adopting, and/or volunteering with us to help us continue saving abandoned and homeless dogs!