Meet Our Team

Oka’s commitment to the Mount Desert Island community brought her to nonprofit work in MDI Hospital’s Office of Advancement in 2013. Her ability to forge meaningful connections and partnerships and drive improvement and innovation led her to the Director of Advancement role in 2022.

A skilled Advancement professional, she has led a variety of successful donor and community initiatives, drawing on her local roots, event management and communications experience. An award-winning journalist and photographer, she has served as Public Affairs Officer, Communications Director and Interim Director of Advancement since joining the organization.

Under her leadership, the Office of Advancement expanded to provide critical philanthropic and communications support, and the organization’s annual fundraising event, which she helped establish, set a new record with more than $400K raised.  She also successfully led the organization’s COVID-19 communications, dedicating countless hours to innovative public outreach efforts around testing, vaccination and education.

Before joining MDI Hospital, Oka worked in events management and catering for clients across MDI. She also worked for news and feature publications in Maine, Oregon and North Carolina including the Mount Desert Islander, the Ellsworth American, the Raleigh News and Observer and Oregon’s Future Magazine.

She holds a Bachelor of Sciences degree in Journalism with a concentration in Advertising and minors in English & Sociology from the University of Maine in Orono and has completed graduate coursework at Emerson College in Boston.

When she’s not at work, she enjoys spending time at her camp on Donnell Pond with family and friends, walking, boating and hiking with her two dachshunds, and traveling, cooking and reading.

Born and raised in central Maine, Danielle first moved to Mount Desert Island in 2008 in search of a job while on summer break from Husson University in Bangor. It wasn’t long before she fell in love, with both the island and a “local”, and decided to make MDI her permanent home.

After graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Accounting and a Master of Business Administration, Danielle has worked in a variety of fields including accounting, human resources, and nonprofit advancement prior to joining MDI Hospital’s Office of Advancement as a Donor Relations Officer in July 2019. Always motivated to make a difference and help others, she is thrilled to be a part of the team and make a positive impact on the MDI community.

Danielle lives in Hall Quarry with her husband Brian, daughters Ava and Lucy, and dogs Baxter and Maisie. In her free time, she enjoys being outdoors and spending time with her family.

Claire Sasner brings many years of diverse development experience in the healthcare field to her role as Donor Engagement Officer, having worked at a large organization such as The Jackson Laboratory as well as in more direct client care settings such as Acadia Family Center and Mount Desert Nursing Association prior to joining MDI Hospital’s Office of Advancement.

She has been a very involved member of the MDI community for over 20 years as an educator, school board member, Bar Harbor Warrant Committee member, volunteer YMCA youth sports coach as well as running a Big Brothers Big Sisters mentoring program in the public schools on MDI.

Claire holds a Bachelor’s degree in Social Work from Wheelock College in Boston and a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from The University of Connecticut.

She lives in Bar Harbor with her husband Mike, and Chocolate Lab, Frank and has two adult children, Allie and Jack.

Robyn grew up in Southwest Harbor, convinced she’d move to the big city right after high school. Instead, she fell in love with a Bar Harbor boy and moved to the other side of the island where they made a home and raised a family.

Robyn worked as a paralegal in Bar Harbor for 17 years with a focus on real estate, estate planning and estate administration. She also turned her love of baking into the creation of Mount Dessert Bakery, a successful bakery and coffee shop in Bar Harbor, which she owned and managed for 12 years.

Since 2010, Robyn has been participating in the Susan G. Komen 3-Day every year, walking 60 miles and raising money for breast cancer research. She is also an avid supporter of St. Jude Children’s Hospital and The Jimmy Fund at Dana-Farber.

Robyn has two adult children, Emily and Andrew, and enjoys spending time with family and friends, traveling, baking and driving her 1972 VW Super Beetle.

Nessa Burns Reifsnyder was born and raised in New York City, but she has deep family roots in Maine. In 1982, Nessa headed north to Bowdoin College, where she double-majored in English and History. Since graduation, she has resided in coastal Maine and worked as a writer, editor, graphic designer, and public speaker.

Her career as a grantwriter began in 1986 with a stint at the nonprofit Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance; then, she switched over to The Jackson Laboratory, where she interpreted cutting-edge genetics research for diverse lay audiences, including foundations and major donors. In 2005, she and a colleague, Joanne Harris, shared an American Business Award for their documentary film about The Jackson Laboratory; Nessa served as scriptwriter, co-interviewer and co-editor for the project, and also located and scanned hundreds of historic photographs used in the film.

Nessa began her position at MDI Hospital in 2013. With her longstanding interest in Island history, her knowledge of bio-medicine, and her storyteller’s heart, she endeavors to inform foundations and major donors about MDI Hospital’s central role in the Downeast region’s health and well-being. With every piece she writes, more people learn about Hancock County’s first hospital–today, one of the nation’s leading rural healthcare facilities and a center for medical education and collaboration.

Along with her work at MDI Hospital, Nessa co-owns a Bar Harbor crafts shop, Fabricate. She also writes and publishes poetry and fiction through her own imprint, Sunswick Media. Nessa and her husband, Peter, have four children. Their home is filled with old books, pop culture detritus, vinyl records, genealogical files, four cats and a dog.

Born and raised in Down East Maine, Brian often visited Mount Desert Island and Acadia National Park as a child and young adult, enjoying the culture and natural beauty the island has to offer. His love of the outdoors eventually led Brian to pursue a Bachelor of Science in Biology at the University of Maine prior to moving to New Mexico in 2012 to pursue grand adventure and a career in public education.

While in New Mexico, Brian worked for seven years in a Title I school district as a high school science teacher, varsity soccer coach, and database specialist. His experiences as a teacher and coach instilled in Brian a desire to help people, but it was the transition to database management that made him realize his analytical skills could help an organization provide more successful service at a larger scale. Over the years, Brian came to recognize that he was not suited for the desert climate and eventually made the decision to return to Maine. Upon his arrival, Brian sought out further opportunities to aid those in need, leading him to the MDI Hospital Advancement team.

After nearly a decade away, Brian is excited to reacquaint himself with the Down East region while lending his skills and knowledge to the hospital and MDI community as a whole. In his free time Brian loves to read, cook, and spend time in nature; he also enjoys snuggling and playing with his cats.

After spending 13 years traveling the country full time in an RV, Suzanne and her husband Phil (having visited, lived or worked in 49 of the 50 states) chose Maine as their permanent home in 2018.

Sue is a Penn State grad who had done a bit of everything as far as employment goes, including retail sales, project management, teaching, copy editing and even sugar beet harvesting. She is glad to be back in the nonprofit world as a member of Mount Desert Island Hospital’s Advancement team.