About Alyssa Givens
I have been in the room. I have also been in the chair.
This is the story behind Family Protection Project, and why no family should have to learn all of this the hard way.
Where it started
Fifteen years. Almost every seat in the room.
I started at a front desk answering phones. Then I was a provider's scribe. Then a business office manager in skilled nursing.
When COVID hit, I became a hospice liaison. I sat with families through phones, through windows, through goodbyes that should never have happened that way. For a stretch I was the only social worker for 100 patients.
I became a Certified Grief Counselor. I went back to liaison work with better tools. Today I lead clinical operations, still inside the system I've spent my career translating for the people it was supposed to serve.
Across every role and every kitchen table, the same six words followed me:
When it got real
Most families are completely unprepared. Not because they don't care.
My career gave me a front-row seat to what families face behind closed doors. The financial stress after a diagnosis. The burnout nobody talks about. The confusion around end-of-life decisions. The guilt of making choices in survival mode.
Families didn't just need more information. They needed guidance they could trust, in words they could use.
So I built it. The guides. The scripts. The roadmap. The things nobody hands you until you're already overwhelmed.
Then I stopped being only the person helping patients.
I became one too.
I live with an autoimmune disease that is slowly changing what my body is capable of doing. Things my family loves, like snowboarding trips, look different than they once did.
For years I helped families prepare for hard moments. Now I'm preparing my own. One day my family may be the ones making decisions for me. After everything I've seen, I refuse to leave them without a roadmap.
That is the foundation of everything I make: remove the guesswork, reduce the chaos, and help families prepare before a crisis forces them to.
The credentials, for the record
The degrees were never the mission. But you should know who's talking.
In the field
- 15 years inside healthcare and hospice
- Hospice liaison and hospice social worker
- Clinical operations leadership
Training
- Certified Grief Counselor (AIHCP)
- Bachelor's degree in Psychology
- MBA in Healthcare Management
- Doctoral candidate in Business
Service
- President, Heart of Hospice Foundation
- Walked my own grandmother through hospice
The life behind the work
Busy, loud, imperfect, and full of life.
I'm a wife and a mom of two. I'm also learning, very humbly, how to run a hobby farm after unintentionally buying 19 acres. It started with sourdough. My starter's name is Hedwig.
My oldest is a high school freshman who fully plans on making the NBA. My youngest is in elementary school and is always making something. My husband is the calm in all of it. If I came home and said, "I think we should raise chickens," he'd sigh, laugh, and ask where we're putting them.
When my health started changing, he never made me feel like a burden. He adjusted with me. That kind of support changes a person. It's the kind of support I want every caregiver to have.
This is personal. It always has been.
Where to go from here