In the landscape of American eldercare, where 63 million people provide unpaid care to aging loved ones and women shoulder the majority of that invisible labor, Kathleen Korpela stands as both witness and architect of change. Her story begins not in a boardroom or a graduate program, but in the most ordinary and devastating of places: at the intersection of love, duty, and an Alzheimer's diagnosis that would reshape everything she thought she knew about caregiving, identity, and what it means to build something that matters.
Perspectives in Healthcare is brought to you by CareYaya, America's number one rated solution for in-home senior care, providing industry-leading quality care at the most affordable rates from over 50,000 students nationwide. CareYaya is known especially for delivering the most reliable and affordable overnight senior care and 24/7 care in many major metro areas including New York, San Francisco, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Atlanta and nationwide.
She was thirty-six years old. An infant and a toddler depended on her. A demanding corporate career filled her days. And then her father received his diagnosis, thrusting her without warning or preparation into a role she had never imagined inhabiting. For nearly eight years, Korpela navigated what she now describes as the hardest, most challenging life experience she has been through. The sandwich generation, they call it. A clinical term for an experience that feels anything but clinical when you are living inside it.
The dementia caregiving journey stretched from diagnosis to death, and throughout it, Korpela grappled with what she calls an identity role reversal she never saw coming. There was the never-ending list of questions and tasks inherent in navigating the complex world of eldercare.There was the overwhelm of managing it all. And perhaps most profoundly, there was the psychological and emotional struggle of watching a parent slip away while trying to remain present for young children who needed her, for a career that demanded her attention, for a version of herself that seemed to recede further with each passing month.
After her father passed away, Korpela did what many people do in the aftermath of profound loss: she reflected. But unlike many, she transformed that reflection into a blueprint for radical change. She realized how unprepared and unsupported she had been throughout the process. Like almost half of all family caregivers, she had received no formal education, resources, or support. She had felt alone in making life-altering decisions about someone she loved deeply, armed with only conflicting information scattered across the internet, overwhelm, and isolation.
The loneliness was particular and acute. She struggled with juggling the demands on her time, with balancing competing priorities of growing children, a declining father, an advancing career, and her own wellbeing. Despite the abundance of information available on caregiving and elder care, nothing resonated with her experience. She was longing to connect with like-minded professional women who were navigating the same challenges she faced: juggling aging parent care with a career and their own family life. She did not feel seen and understood, or helped, by outdated articles floating around the internet or support groups whose members' circumstances differed from her own.
In that gap between what existed and what was needed, Korpela found her calling. She asked herself a question that would become the foundation of everything that followed: What if other women didn't have to struggle through this alone? What if there was a way to transform the challenging experience of supporting and caring for an aging parent into confidence, know-how, and purpose? That was her moment of awakening. She could continue climbing the corporate ladder where she felt unfulfilled, or she could leap into something that mattered deeply. She could create the blueprint and support system she wished she had during her own caregiving journey.
The decision to launch a startup focused on women family caregivers was not easy, but Korpela describes it as necessary. The statistics she cites are not merely numbers but representations of a larger elder caregiving crisis in the United States, millions of women invisibly struggling in silence. Sixty-three million Americans provide unpaid care to aging loved ones, with women carrying sixty percent of that burden. In the sandwich generation, seventy percent are women. By 2030, aging adults needing care will outnumber available family caregivers.
From this recognition, Living Goldenwell was born. Korpela founded what she describes as the first-of-its-kind member community platform for women supporting aging parents and navigating eldercare. The mission is both simple and revolutionary: to transform the eldercare experience for women. To serve women caring for aging parents by helping them gain know-how, clarity, and community support. To deliver to women what they need during their loneliest and most challenging caregiving moments through expert guidance, proven strategies, and a supportive network of women who understand because they are also living through it.
What Korpela offers to students and early-career professionals exploring this field reflects her entrepreneurial spirit and her understanding of unmet need. She sees huge gaps and opportunities for services and solutions that meet the needs of family caregivers, the ones who come alongside and support the aging loved one. She encourages those with interest and expertise in eldercare and caregiving to explore starting a business that meets a market need in this area or disrupts an existing traditional business model.
But perhaps Korpela's most profound contribution lies not just in the platform she has built, but in the narrative shift she champions. She speaks of the need to reframe aging narratives, from one of fear to one of fulfillment. She believes we must shift our cultural narrative about aging from one of decline and loss to one of possibility and growth. Rather than viewing our parents' later years through a lens of fear and sadness, we can embrace this life stage as potentially rich, informative, and unexpectedly fulfilling. A normalized part of life's journey worthy of curiosity and hope.
This reframe, Korpela argues, is not merely philosophical but essential. America is aging rapidly. More people are entering later life stages requiring care and support, making this a universal experience across communities and families. Age discrimination and unconscious bias remain pervasive, especially in the workplace, with fears about aging stemming largely from lack of knowledge and direct experience, perpetuating harmful stereotypes. Caregiving represents both a public health crisis and an economic security issue. With 63 million unpaid family caregivers, sixty-one percent of them women, providing 296 hours of care annually to a loved one, care valued at 643 billion dollars, the impact on national productivity and individual financial stability cannot be ignored. A growing number of U.S. adults are simultaneously caring for children and aging parents, with women comprising sixty to seventy percent of this demographic, creating unprecedented stress on families and especially on women.
The mission of Living Goldenwell ties directly to this larger vision: to transform the eldercare experience for family caregivers from a potentially negative one to a positive, empowering, and fulfilling experience that they could not have achieved otherwise without the guidance, support, and resources available through the member community. Living Goldenwell is working to shift this aging narrative, one family caregiver at a time.
In Kathleen Korpela's journey from overwhelmed sandwich generation caregiver to founder and entrepreneur, there is a story that belongs both to her alone and to the millions of women who will follow similar paths in the years to come. She took the hardest experience of her life and asked not just how she might survive it, but how she might ensure that others would not have to endure it in the same way. In doing so, she joined the quiet revolution of women who refuse to accept that caregiving must be synonymous with isolation, who insist that the experience of caring for aging parents can be met with community, knowledge, and even joy.
Her father's diagnosis arrived without warning at the age of thirty-six. What she built in the aftermath of his death stands as testament to the possibility that from the most difficult passages of our lives, we might create something that lights the way for others walking similar roads. This is the work of transformation. This is what it means to take personal crisis and forge from it a collective future where no woman must navigate eldercare alone.