Built from experience.
Designed to change
what grief support looks like.
A team that understands grief from the inside out — turning lived experience into care that's accessible, approachable, and lasting.
HOW IT STARTED
A mission, before it became a business.
Empower Change began when Roderick Alemania — a San Francisco-based entrepreneur motivated by the loss of his parents and brother reached out to volunteer at a nonprofit supporting grieving children, led by Jeff Kimball.
Jeff, a grief support leader who had helped scale four grief-related nonprofits, was grappling with a much bigger question about the future of grief support.
"If we had a blank sheet of paper, what grief support problem needs to be solved?"
WHAT WE LEARNED
Three Problems, One Mission.
Jeff has been wrestling with these challenges — through his work scaling nonprofits, and through his own profound losses: his wife, parents, grandparent, best friend, and nine-year-old niece. But it was not just Jeff's experience, but a year and a half of extensive due diligence that led to this realization:
Most people don't get the support they want
7 in 10 people who want grief support don't get it. We're facing a massive shortage of therapists, and while excellent local grief support nonprofits exist, they reach only a small fraction of those searching for support.
The organizations and people providing support are overwhelmed
Hospice professionals are compassionate and skilled — but stretched thin by the scale of need, especially the ecosystem surrounding the patient (friends, relatives, colleagues). The system that supports the grieving is itself in need of disruption.
We don't do a good job talking about grief - it's cold, cliched and generic
As a society, we struggle to deal with grief constructively — so people suffer in silence and lack resilience. Most resources apply universal advice to deeply personal experiences, leaving people feeling unseen. We can change this by creating a new approach that's personalized and scalable.
Grief Support, Reimagined.
