About LIFT
Some Places Aren't Just Houses. They're Where Our Stories Live.
LIFT is an Alaska-founded home and community support organization built on personal experience, practical leadership, and a shared belief in dignity, choice, connection, and independence.
Our Mission & Vision
Called to Serve. Committed to Care.
Mission
Helping people remain in the homes and communities they love.
Vision
To redefine community-based care by empowering people to live with greater independence, dignity, and choice—while strengthening families, caregivers, and communities.
What Guides Us
Our Core Values
LIFT
We lift others by encouraging, empowering, and supporting people as they pursue greater independence, dignity, purpose, and hope. No one person should have to carry the whole weight alone.
Integrity
We earn trust through honesty, transparency, and accountability. We communicate openly, honor our commitments, and do what is right.
Faith in People
We believe every person has strengths, inherent worth, and the right to make meaningful choices and direct their own life.
Teamwork
We share responsibility and work alongside clients, families, caregivers, staff, professionals, and community partners so people feel supported—not overwhelmed or left behind.
Supporting the People Who Do the Work
LIFT was also created with the people doing the work in mind. Caregiving and support work can be deeply meaningful, but it can also ask a great deal of caregivers, administrative staff, and leaders. We believe the strongest care comes from supported teams—where responsibility is shared, people can rely on one another, and meaningful work leaves room for personal well-being, family, and life outside of work.
Our Story
Why We Started
A Home Made to Last
In 1960, Jack and his wife, Barbara, built a family home in East Anchorage. The home stood through the 1964 Good Friday Earthquake, became the place where they raised six daughters, and held generations of family memories.
Jack and Barbara also planned for their family’s future. After Jack died in the early 2000s, their financial and legacy planning helped Barbara remain in the home they had created together.
As the years passed, Barbara aged—as we all do—and her needs changed. Remaining at home required the family to adapt. Home modifications were made, plans evolved, and family members stepped in as caregivers and supporters.
Today, Barbara is in her eighties and continues to live in the home she loves.
Her experience shows that independence does not mean doing everything alone. It means having the planning, resources, adaptability, and people around you to keep making your own choices and living where you belong.
"If the world is cold, make it your business to build fires."
— Jack Butt
A Better Way Forward
Barbara's experience stayed with her granddaughter, Jenny Kimble, throughout more than 15 years of leadership in Alaska's home and community-based services system.
Jenny saw clients and families navigating systems that did not always leave enough room for flexibility, personal choice, or human connection. She also saw demanding workloads and limited support leave dedicated caregivers, administrative staff, and leaders overwhelmed and burned out.
Jack’s words helped turn that experience into a clear sense of purpose. Jenny set out to build a different kind of care organization—one where responsibility is shared, people support one another, and meaningful work leaves room for family, well-being, and life beyond work.
The Family Behind the Mission
Building Something Worth Coming Home To
LIFT is deeply personal for Jenny. Her husband and children are a daily reminder that time, presence, connection, and the people we return home to matter.
She created LIFT to help people remain close to the homes, families, and communities they love—and to build a workplace where caregivers, administrative staff, and leaders can do meaningful work while still being present for their own families. For Jenny, those goals are part of the same promise: care should strengthen people's lives, not consume them.
"My family is the reason I wanted to build LIFT differently. I want my children to see that serving others and being present for the people you love can exist side by side."
Jenny KimbleCo-Founder & Program Administrator
A Shared Vision
Built Through Focused Teamwork
True to the meaning of LIFT, Jenny knew the organization should not be built by one person alone. After years of leadership in Alaska's home and community-based services system, she partnered with Tonja Hazley, an experienced caregiver and owner of Caregivers of Alaska.
Tonja brought firsthand knowledge of caregiving along with the hard-earned experience of building and operating a small Alaska-based business. She shared Jenny's belief that a small, local organization could create meaningful change and provide the personal attention that can be difficult to maintain in larger systems.
Tonja was also willing to openly share what she had learned. Her practical guidance, mentorship, and steady leadership helped LIFT navigate the daily demands of building a new company and gave the organization a stronger foundation from the beginning.
Together, Jenny and Tonja founded LIFT—Living Independently through Focused Teamwork—to create support that is personal and flexible for clients, sustainable for families and caregivers, and healthier for the people doing and coordinating the work.
LIFT reflects their shared belief that no client, family member, caregiver, staff member, or leader should be left carrying the weight alone.
Called to Serve. Committed to Care.
Caregivers of Alaska is independently owned and operated and remains a separate business from LIFT.