Summary

Despite presenting itself as a welcoming parrot rescue, Mickaboo Companion Bird Rescue has a pattern of exclusion, inconsistent leadership, and troubling racial bias. The case of Joi Eubanks—a highly qualified Black volunteer who was denied a coordinator role despite urgent need—highlights these systemic issues. Leadership repeatedly cited unwritten “standards,” reinstated a baseless warning on her record, and silenced public discussion when she asked for accountability. This post examines how power is concentrated, diversity is lacking and volunteers like Joi are pushed out, raising urgent questions about equity and transparency at Mickaboo.

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Introduction

Mickaboo Companion Bird Rescue presents itself as a lifeline for parrots in need, but behind the scenes, the organization is plagued by dysfunction, high turnover and troubling patterns of exclusion. Volunteers report stalled adoptions, unfilled coordinator positions and a leadership culture that plays favorites and drives people away. The case of one volunteer, Joi Eubanks, brings these issues into sharp focus. Despite her extensive experience and proven commitment, she was denied the chance to serve in a critical coordinator role at a time when Mickaboo is desperate for help. Her story raises uncomfortable but necessary questions about whether bias—including racial bias—is shaping who is welcomed and who is pushed out.

Managing Mickaboo: How Species Teams Are Supposed to Work

Mickaboo divides its birds into seventeen species groups. In theory, each group should have a coordinator and, depending on the species, one or more volunteers, to handle intake, fostering and adoptions. In practice, only a few teams function as intended. The budgie team, which manages the highest traffic, has long been one of the most effective. The lovebird and caique teams are also well run, though their caseload is much smaller. Most other species groups are struggling. Some have coordinators, but Sarah Lemarié either interferes heavily with those teams or acts as coordinator herself, slowing down bird placements. Her habit of playing favorites means that if she dislikes a candidate, she may stall an application indefinitely or simply stop responding.

Leadership Gaps and Volunteer Dismissal at Mickaboo

The removal of Melaine and Vincent dealt a serious blow. Between the two of them, they coordinated African greys, cockatiels, poicephalus, pionus and rosellas, and also served as co-coordinators for amazons and other species teams that needed support. In April, the ringneck coordinator announced she would be stepping down during the summer, and in the past few weeks, both the amazon and cockatoo coordinators have resigned. As usual, these departures have not been announced publicly. Furthermore, positions the volunteer coordinator had been struggling to fill for months before Melaine’s and Vincent’s departure remain vacant. Leadership continues to tell volunteers that replacements are lined up, but in reality, more people are leaving, some quietly and others publicly.

Overall volunteer retention and training are also faltering. Sarah’s abrasive style drives many people away, and there are too few home visitors and phone screeners to meet demand. New volunteers are not being onboarded quickly enough. Before they were ousted, Melaine and Vincent had built self-paced tutorials for home visits and phone screens on the LearnWorlds platform, as well as training modules for internal systems. With them gone, these resources are no longer available.

Joi Eubanks: A Qualified Volunteer Denied Without Explanation

Against this backdrop, it is especially troubling that when a capable foster volunteered to serve as African grey coordinator, she was turned down without explanation. That volunteer, Joi Eubanks, is African American. Given Mickaboo’s urgent need for coordinators, her rejection raises serious questions about whether racism played a part. The broader context makes those concerns hard to dismiss.

Does Mickaboo Have a Diversity Problem?

Mickaboo operates in the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the most diverse regions in the country, with a majority people-of-color population since the 1980s. Yet the organization’s leadership and key volunteer base remain overwhelmingly white. The current board has only one non-white member: treasurer Pamela Lee, who is Asian. Nearly all coordinators are white, and in almost three decades, Mickaboo has had only a handful of non-white people in positions of influence.

Though the current “executive committee” members hold ultimate authority, it is Sarah Lemarié who serves as the face of the organization. She is the one most volunteers and adopters deal with day-to-day. However, Michelle and Tammy are just as involved, and all three shape decisions on placements, fostering and coordinator approval. The other board members allow this dynamic to continue and reinforce it through their silence or complicity.

Signs of Racial Bias in Mickaboo’s Volunteer Practices

In November 2022, Joi applied to adopt a macaw. She had more than fifteen years of experience with birds and passed both her phone screen and home visit with high marks. She was quickly approved. In March 2023, she planned to adopt a macaw named Watson and picked up his belongings, but his owner decided to keep him. Sarah visited Joi’s home to collect the items, complimented her aviary, but then asked if her landlord minded her having so many birds. Joi owns her home.

This was the first indication of racial bias. The assumption that a Black person is renting instead of owning draws on a stereotype that Black people are less likely to own property. Even if there are broad statistical disparities in homeownership across racial groups (driven by historical and systemic inequities), applying that generalization to an individual based on race is discriminatory. The effect of such an assumption is to diminish or question someone’s economic status, stability or achievements, purely because of their race. That reinforces harmful prejudices and unequal treatment. Even if someone doesn’t intend to be racist, the outcome of making that assumption is still harmful. Racism isn’t only about intent—it’s also about how biases shape perceptions and reinforce inequities.

Just Trying to Help

Joi adopted a different macaw called Tim. After a few months, she sent Sarah an update and said she’d like to foster. Sarah replied with criticisms and said Joi was nearly at capacity in terms of the number of birds she had, despite keeping thirty birds herself in a far smaller space. Joi addressed the concerns and reaffirmed her wish to foster, but Sarah never responded.

In August 2023, Joi wrote to Discuss saying she was told she was “under coaching,” but that no one had explained what that meant. She reminded leadership she had already complied with requests and been approved to adopt and foster. But leadership continued to say that Joi was not following Mickaboo’s “standard policies” on housing and capacity. In truth, there is no consistent, written policy that is used to evaluate fosters, adopters, coordinators and, especially, leadership. There has never been a clear or fair process, and decisions are often made arbitrarily or based on personal preference rather than documented standards. This lack of transparency makes it impossible for volunteers to know what is expected of them—or to challenge a decision made without justification.

Joi was ultimately able to work behind the scenes with other coordinators who supported her efforts to foster and adopt a cockatoo and three lovebirds. However, when Sarah learned of this, she reacted harshly—rebuking the coordinators involved and declaring that, moving forward, all placements would need to go through her directly. This was yet another example of Sarah overriding the coordinator system and centralizing control, undermining the autonomy of those entrusted with making placement decisions. It was shortly after this incident that the red-box warning was added to Joi’s record.

Why Was A Qualified Black Volunteer Turned Away?

In late 2024, another volunteer, struggling to care for a cockatoo named Kiki, asked for help. Joi volunteered. Tammy was supposed to talk to her and determine whether she thought Joi was okay to foster. While Joi was waiting for approval, she contacted Lisa, the volunteer coordinator, about helping with home visits. Lisa saw a warning in Joi’s ASM file and asked Tammy about it. Tammy admitted she had not followed up.

The warning itself had created the impression that Joi was unsuitable. Even Melaine, when she first saw the red box, formed a negative opinion. It was only after she spoke with another coordinator who knew Joi well that she was able to approach the issue without bias and ultimately correct the record. Melaine spoke to Joi, found no basis for the warning, and removed it, attributing it to Sarah’s personal dislike.

By early 2025, Joi was fostering Kiki successfully, had finally been able to adopt her three lovebird fosters that she had wanted to adopt for months, and was training as a home visitor. Her involvement allowed Mickaboo to expand coverage into underserved areas.

A Pattern of Exclusion: Repeating Old Claims as Justification

Despite this, Sarah continued to cite Joi as a negative example in internal discussions. In September 2025, Joi volunteered to fill the still-empty African grey coordinator position–or at the very least help with it. She was refused with a one-line email and no explanation. This was especially egregious given that multiple coordinators had recently resigned. Joi posted to Discuss, outlining her qualifications and raising concerns about bias. Her main question was why she had been refused the coordinator role. At first, leadership didn’t respond.

Meanwhile, Joi discovered that the red box warning had been reinstated in her ASM file, even though Melaine had previously removed it. When she pressed for answers, leadership recycled the same list of old criticisms that had been resolved more that two years earlier. When she escalated and noted she had contacted outside agencies, Mickaboo responded by asking her to take the issue offline to discuss with them privately. When she refused to do this, Matt Linton, Mickaboo’s technical director, put the entire Discuss list into moderation so no one could continue the conversation.

Patterns Matter

If a qualified person of color steps forward to serve and is blocked without explanation while the organization is in urgent need of help, it raises serious concerns. Joi had proven herself as an adopter, foster and home visitor. Yet leadership ignored her main question, reinstated an unjustified warning in her file, and silenced discussion when she pressed for accountability.

Racism is not only overt hostility. It is also found in patterns of exclusion, in the repetition of untrue narratives and in the unequal distribution of opportunity. By every measure, Mickaboo’s leadership has failed to reflect the diversity of the community it serves, and it has blocked or dismissed the contributions of people of color. Whether through intent or neglect, these choices create an environment that is exclusionary and discriminatory. The question is not only whether Mickaboo leadership are racist, but whether they are willing to recognize and change the patterns of bias in their own decisions.