Meet the New Team at the WCVA

The Washington County Visitors Association (WCVA), the official destination marketing organization for Oregon’s Tualatin Valley (also known as Washington County), recently completed the hiring of new members to its team, each of whom brings a wealth of experience and expertise in numerous disciplines.

Appointments were made under the direction of the organization’s new president and chief executive officer, Dave Parulo, who joined the WCVA in June and whose hiring was previously announced.

Nicole Bradin joined the WCVA team on November 17 as community engagement director. Prior to joining the team, she served as a client success manager at Bandwango, where she worked with destination marketing clients through the strategic process of planning, coordinating, launching, managing, and maximizing usage of Bandwango’s Destination Experience Engine (DXE) software technology.

Bradin spent more than nine years at Sonoma County Tourism in Santa Rosa, California. In her role as director of community engagement, she was tasked to build a community engagement program from the ground up, elevating the perception of the hospitality and tourism industry to the 40 local cities, towns, and communities the organization serves. She also spent 16 years in New York City working in the entertainment industry and running her own consulting business.

Bradin holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in theatre arts from Sonoma State University and a Master of Fine Arts in theatre arts from Rutgers University.

Isabelle Taylor joined as the WCVA’s new digital marketing manager in November and oversees the organization’s social media channels, website, photo library and customer relationship management systems. She is an experienced marketing manager with a love for content creation and photography.

Taylor graduated from Western Washington University with a degree in graphic design, and immediately began work as a content creator within marketing departments for a variety of different types of businesses–from digital agencies to tool manufacturers–to create growth-focused marketing strategies.

As previously announced, the WCVA welcomed two new destination sales staff to the organization in October:

• Wendy Popkin joined the organization as Vice-President of Destination Sales on November 1, 2021. She leads the organization’s direct group sales efforts to meeting professionals, sports organizers and travel.  Popkin brings more than 30 years of tourism expertise to the organization, and she most recently was executive director of the Oregon Hospitality Foundation, a role she held for nine years.

• Luke Zak joined the WCVA in October as its new sports destination sales executive. In his new role, Zak is charged with organizing and leading the destination group sales and service function for the sports and social, military, educational, religious, and fraternal group (SMERF) markets. Luke  recently completed his Master of Business Administration in Sports Business from the University of Oregon/Warsaw Sports Marketing Center and brings more than a decade of sports management and tourism experience to the organization.

The new team joins long-time WCVA employees, Sylke Neal-Finnegan, vice president of marketing and communications, Jason McGill, chief financial officer, and Christopher Glawe, senior graphic designer.

Read the bios of the WCVA team >>>