March 2026 was a big milestone for OCCRA. We held our Board of Directors meeting and officially completed a major leadership transition as we move into the next phase of OCCRA’s growth. It was a really special moment to reflect on how far this organization has come in just a few short years — from a tiny founding board to the incredible team we have today.

Image 1: Our founding OCCRA board in 2021 — Alicia Laing, Mike Borden, and Virginia Krakowiak — who helped get this entire program off the ground.

Image 2: The board from 2023–2026 — Virginia Borden, Joanne Cloud, Alicia Laing, Mike Borden, Shannon Dooley, and Darci Love — who helped guide OCCRA through massive growth, hundreds of wildlife rescues, and the volunteer team many of you are part of today.

Image 3: Our new OCCRA Board of Directors as of March 5, 2026.

New Board Officer Positions
President — Scotty Lombardi
Vice President — Nikki Panos
Secretary — Danny Rost
Treasurer — Susie Sullivan

General Board Members
Virginia Borden

We also want to recognize the board members who are stepping down from their officer roles after years of dedication:
Alicia Laing, who served as Secretary and will now be focusing on human medicine, teaching, and her anti-human trafficking board work in Vancouver.
Shannon Dooley, who is stepping down to pursue some exciting new adventures.
Joanne Cloud, who runs a farm and tortoise sanctuary and a lot of kiddos in Vancouver, she has also worked with the Coast Guard for over 20 years.
Mike Borden, this dude is about 2 years from retiring from the fire department, and is busy with taking care of the property and the blue button farm.
Darci Love, Darci has been with OCCRA since our humblest of beginnings. In fact she transported the first wildlife patient, a northern saw-whet owl from a Portland fire station to the Bird Alliance of Oregon back in 2022! Darci has not only been a volunteer, board member, and contractor, she has been a voice of empathy, kindness, knowledge, support and laughter as a true friend to this organization. Said simply, we would not be where we are without Darci Love. She is focusing her time on her career in vet medicine and raising her own rescue animals, but still a very active volunteer with our team.

OCCRA exists because of the time, energy, and heart that so many people have poured into it over the years — from the founding board, to the leaders who helped grow the program, to every single volunteer responding to wildlife calls across our six counties.

This transition is an exciting new chapter, and we are incredibly grateful to everyone stepping into leadership roles to help guide OCCRA forward.
The future is bright and we’re just getting started.

We have a lot of transitioning to work on and you may not see too much of the admin work happening but, know that there are roots and focus driven passion happening behind the screen on behalf of our mission, the animals, and our community and volunteers!