Joanna Sorensen is on the Board of Directors for Healing Paws for Warriors, providing non-

profit organizational guidance.

 

Joanna, the daughter of a 23-year Army Vietnam veteran, spent five years in Radar Maintenance and Operations assigned to Poinsett Electronic Combat Range near Shaw AFB, SC, where she met her husband. She eventually retrained into the Personnel career field, which prompted a change in duty station for them to Cannon AFB, NM. After gaining the rank of Staff Sergeant and completing another five years, she then followed her veteran Air Force husband home to western New York. There, she obtained her Bachelor’s and Master’s in Education from SUNY Fredonia. She eventually taught English at the local junior college, while also spending time as a children’s librarian at the local library for eleven years. Meanwhile, she and her family started fostering dogs for a national rescue, Pointer Rescue Org. Over the course of nine years, they fostered 19 dogs, saving them from kill shelters up and down the eastern seaboard.

 

Joanna and her husband moved to Florida in 2022 after fighting the unrelenting snow for 19 years. She now works as a Disabled Veteran Outreach Program Specialist (basically, a Career Advisor) on the Veteran Services Team at CareerSource Okaloosa Walton, focusing on helping transitioning service members and veterans find meaningful employment. She also performs duties as the Treasurer for the Silver Threads Quilt Guild, where she shares a love of quilting and participates in making quilts for charity. She and her husband enjoy spending time at the beach: he with his surf fishing rod and she with either a book to read or a notebook to write in. They are currently enjoying training their newest addition to the family, a rescued 8-month-old English Pointer puppy, Odin.