Our Team

Pembroke, North Carolina native Tim Brooks is the President of HealthKeeperz, a family-owned business since its founding as Pembroke Drug Center in 1967. After earning his bachelor’s degree in health policy and management from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2000, Tim joined the family business, re-christened as HealthKeeperz by his father, founder Howard Brooks, to reflect the company’s expanded mission to provide home-based health services for the people of southeastern North Carolina.

Serving as the company’s Home Health Director from 2000 to 2004, Tim managed the company’s day-to-day operations of the HealthKeeperz home health and private duty home care lines. In 2004, Tim assumed the role of President of HealthKeeperz, further developing the company as a community-based health care organization featuring a spectrum of services to include home health, hospice, home medical equipment, private duty services, and the original pharmacy that has now served Pembroke and surrounding communities for 50 years.  

Currently, the growing organization cares for a range of communities, from urban areas like Fayetteville to small towns dotting rural southeastern North Carolina, with a service footprint encompassing 12 counties. Tim focuses his day-to-day work on developing an organization defined by its values, as he develops leadership across the organization. During Tim’s tenure, the company has continuously improved while providing exceptional customer service and excellence in clinical quality, while achieving financial goals of growing into new markets and earning greater market share.

The not-so-hidden secret to the company’s success under founder Howard Brooks and now through the leadership of Tim Brooks is the unwavering commitment to develop HealthKeeperz as a mission-based organization defined by its “Barnabas Culture,” a way of living the Gospel by celebrating its caregivers for their excellence in caring for patients, selflessness, and humility, as well as encouraging their colleagues daily.

Love of God. Love of family. Love of community. These are the defining values of the life of our founder, Howard Brooks.

After graduating from the Medical University of South Carolina’s School of Pharmacy in 1966, Howard Brooks came home to become one of the Pembroke area’s first licensed pharmacists. The following year, he established Pembroke Drug Center to care for his hometown community.

Over the last 50 years, as Pembroke Drug Center has grown and morphed into the full-service home health agency known today as HealthKeeperz, Mr. Brooks has provided help, care, and support to the families of Pembroke and surrounding communities as a pharmacist. And during that time, he has often helped families receive needed medication, even when they little or no ability to pay.

Today, the lifelong commitment of Mr. Brooks to his native southeastern North Carolina region continues to bear fruit, as HealthKeeperz remains focused on caring for all people for the glory of God.

A true community servant, Mr. Brooks has held leadership roles in multiple community organizations, including Pembroke Gospel Chapel, Lumbee Guaranty Bank, and the School of Nursing at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

Known for his generosity to all, he established the Brenda B. Brooks Distinguished Professorship at UNC-Pembroke in honor of his late wife, as well as the Howard Brooks Endowed Scholarship at Medical University of South Carolina School of Pharmacy.

In recognition of a lifetime of commitment to the betterment of his community and the scores of citizens who have benefitted from his loving care, Mr. Brooks was given North Carolina’s greatest individual distinction, induction into the Order of the Long Leaf Pine. He was honored to be the Order’s first inductee appointed by Governor Roy Cooper, in the spring of 2017.

Howard Brooks continues to advise and mentor the current President of HealthKeeperz and one of his five beloved children, Tim Brooks, as the younger Brooks takes the company to new levels of innovation and excellence in clinical quality.

Uinta Tipton is Vice President of Finance for HealthKeeperz and has been with the company for 12 years. As a person who loves working with numbers, she appreciates the opportunity to share with others the data and tools necessary to make key business decisions.

What Ms. Tipton enjoys most about working for HealthKeeperz is that the company makes a difference, both physically and spiritually, in the lives of so many: patients, coworkers, families, and the community. She says the job challenges her not only as an individual but as a leader as well, making her job extremely rewarding.
 
Ms. Tipton has spent her entire career in accounting and finance after earning her B.S. in accounting and MBA from Brigham Young University. Like many on the HealthKeeperz leadership team, Ms. Tipton is a native of Pembroke, NC.

James Chavis came to HealthKeeperz in 2014 to serve with the Hospice team as a hospice chaplain. In February 2015, “Chaplain Chavis,” as he came to be called by many hospice families and staff at HealthKeeperz, stepped into a dual chaplaincy role and added corporate chaplaincy care to his responsibilities. Primarily, that care consisted of providing spiritual and emotional care to HealthKeeperz employees and their immediate households when requested and overseeing the Barnabas Caring Team. In 2021 James stepped away from the hospice chaplaincy responsibilities to give all his time to employee care, organizational culture leadership and development, and community engagement. Then in January of 2023, upon the retirement of his predecessor, James started serving as the Director of Human Resources for HealthKeeperz.

James says that his life passion is caring for people, and he desires that everyone touched by HealthKeeperz would have the opportunity to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ and that through faith in Christ, live a flourishing life now and forevermore. James says he does this by championing the HealthKeeperz mission, ‘Caring for all people for the glory of God.’ Before joining the HealthKeeperz family, James taught a vocational rehabilitation class in the Workforce Development Program at Robeson Community College and was a NC licensed general contractor and small business owner.

James is a lifelong Pembroke community member and serves as one of the church Elders at CrossWay of Pembroke Church and the music ministry leader.