Lusiana Hadi is the Founder of BARK Rescue CA. She is a Chinese-Indonesian-American born in Indonesia and raised in the United States, specifically in the small, college town of Urbana, IL. Since a young age, she has always loved animals. As a child in Indonesia, a country where animal welfare was basically non-existent at the time, she and her mom rescued a few stray cats, kittens, dogs and puppies. She also spent her childhood with an adult dog that had been abused by a family member- this is Lusiana’s first experience with an abused companion pet that had turned aggressive due to the abuse.
Prior to her career in Animal Welfare, she had earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Accounting, with a concentration in Financial Analysis, from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She then worked in Finance & Accounting in startups and public corporations for a decade when she decided to pivot into a career that aligns with her passion: Animal Welfare & Social Impact (also known as Social Justice).
Lusiana’s journey in the animal welfare and social justice space started with the following roles:
- Content Creation Project Manager & Membership Program Manager role at Orang Utan Republik Foundation, an LA-based non-profit organization whose mission is to help rehabilitate rescued orangutans in Indonesia & Malaysia.
- Having been a part-time YouTuber for 4 years, she also took on a volunteer role as a video editor at Paws of LA Rescue, an LA-based 501c3 animal rescue organization.
- Social Impact Intern at Logitech in a team that was in charge of the company’s employee giving & volunteering program
- Content Creation Project Manager at PEERS, a government-funded non-profit organization in the mental health space
- Project Manager at Trauma Speaks, a 501c3 non-profit organization in the mental health space.
She went to UCLA Anderson to pursue an MBA with a concentration in Social Impact. However, after her first year she decided to withdraw from the program so she could focus on building BARK Rescue CA.
During Covid, she and her husband adopted an 8-week old Chihuahua Mix puppy from Humane Society of Silicon Valley and named him after an Indonesian traditional design Batik. Batik is also the inspiration of the name BARK Rescue CA. Outside of work and BARK Rescue, she loves to dance (especially fitness hip hop dance), watch movies on Netflix/Hulu/Amazon Video/YouTube, go on spa days, hanging out with her husband and dog, and talking on the phone with her mom for hours every weekend.