From Personal Tragedy to Trauma-Informed Leadership

Summary

Podcast Summary: Living Your Legacy Episode Title: From Personal Tragedy to Trauma-Informed Leadership
Host: Rudy Mawer
Guest: Mika Star Liberty
Date: June 26, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode features an in-depth conversation with Mika Star Liberty— a resilient and mission-driven trial lawyer, founder of Lion Hearted Leader, The Soaring Center, and Radiant Star Roasters. Mika discusses her journey through personal tragedy, the critical importance of trauma-informed leadership, and how her own experiences have shaped her approach to business, advocacy, and empowering others. The discussion also covers the challenges of burnout, the legacy of collective effort in high-stakes environments like the White House, and practical advice for individuals and organizations seeking to become more trauma-responsive.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Hidden Impacts of Trauma

• Personal Tragedy and Early Coping
  • Mika recounts the profound effect of losing her childhood friend Amber to a serial killer, shaping her understanding of trauma from a young age.
  • For years, Mika buried her trauma, not knowing how to process or compartmentalize it.
    • “I just kind of tamped down and kept it moving because, you know, it's not easy and I was young and didn't really know how to compartmentalize any of it. So I just didn't.” (03:01, Mika)
• The Cost of Unaddressed Trauma
  • Ignoring trauma had devastating impacts on her health and functioning, eventually leaving her bedridden.
    • “I was basically in bed unable to function because of all of the trauma I had taken on.” (06:02, Mika)
  • Important lesson: Avoidance only plants “little trauma landmines” that can erupt unexpectedly.

2. Understanding Trauma Responses

• Recognizing and Naming Trauma

  • Both Mika and Jason underscore the importance of recognizing trauma responses—even those you might not realize are trauma-related.
    • “There are times where I have some response and I'm like, oh, that's a trauma response. And I didn't even know that was something I felt trauma over.” (03:55, Mika)
  • Jason highlights the famous adage: “The body keeps the score.” (03:53, Jason & Mika)

• Bringing Trauma Awareness to Organizations

  • After the pandemic, mental health challenges are more prevalent, making it even more important for businesses to be trauma-informed and responsive.
    • “It's so easy to learn how to protect yourself and to understand what your brain and body are doing so that you can keep going.” (06:23, Mika)

3. Burnout and Modern Dopamine Addiction

• Normalizing, Naming, and Confronting Burnout

  • Mika encourages listeners to not be afraid to acknowledge burnout and get to the root causes, instead of simply accepting it as a job requirement.
    • “Don't be afraid of it. Don't be afraid to name it. Don't be afraid to confront. Confront it within yourself.” (07:31, Mika)

• Stress as Dopamine

  • Both discuss how stress can produce dopamine, leading to addiction to high-stress environments—especially in achievement-driven cultures.
    • “Stress can also be interpreted by your brain as enthusiasm or excitement. And so we can become addicted to that and we don't even understand necessarily what deeper impact it's having.” (00:00 & 07:55, Mika)
    • “Your brain can assign a dopamine response to stress. And a lot of people don't even really know that you can get dopamine from things that are causing your body stress.” (08:20, Jason)

• Culture of “Chronic Online-ness”

  • The easy hits of dopamine from online validation and social media compound these patterns.
    • “I try to tell people a lot. Nowadays, I think everybody's dopamine addicted.” (08:40, Jason)

4. Lessons from the White House: Leadership and Legacy

• Culture of Selflessness and Shared Vision

  • Mika reflects on the tight-knit, mission-driven culture during her time in the Clinton White House.
    • “It's incredible to watch everyone moving in the same direction to achieve a goal that's not about them, that's about the greater good.” (09:48, Mika)
  • The analogy of “carpooling” toward a shared goal (11:02, Jason).

• Entrepreneurship as Problem-Solving

  • Mika's approach: Identify a problem, start a business to solve it—whether in law, advocacy, or supporting women in coffee.

5. The Core of Trauma-Informed Leadership

• Prioritizing Leadership & Communication

  • Good leadership hinges on being trauma-informed and having strong communication skills.
    • "Leaders can make or break a business...There are easy tweaks to make and they're really the only way to have teams that are in high income earning or generating and client satisfaction and staff satisfaction." (11:55, Mika)
    • “Be trauma informed and have good communication skills. It's not that difficult. And...just listen.” (12:54, Jason)
  • Listening to staff and clients is the simplest way to solve organizational problems.
    • “Your clients will tell you what's wrong with your business. Your employees, your staff will tell you what's going wrong in the business.” (13:08, Jason)

• Emotional Safety and Diversity

  • Emotional safety for staff is essential—not all employees feel comfortable giving feedback.
    • “Staff don't always feel safe...telling their, the person who signs their check what they think the problems are. But those are the employees you want.” (13:58, Mika)
  • Teams embracing diverse, outlier opinions perform better and generate more income.
    • “Cohesive groups, groups where people feel safe to share outlier opinions...those are the teams that make more money. Those are the teams that do better.” (14:42, Mika)

6. Navigating Trauma—Advice and Resources

• Advice for Those Struggling with Trauma
  • Many may not even realize their symptoms stem from trauma.
  • Mika offers actionable advice:
    • Seek out online resources and education.
    • Mika's book includes chapters on recognizing and managing trauma.
    • Look for trauma-informed certification for deeper learning or organizational change.
    • Sometimes, having someone mirror your experience is the first step to recognizing trauma, but Jason cautions:
      "Approach that with caution because not everybody is going to be in the right mindset to hear someone say, hey, that's your trauma." (17:01, Jason)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Mika Star Liberty:
  • "I learned the hard way that pushing down all of your trauma and not working to understand it...can have a devastating impact on you as a person and as a whole." (00:25)
  • “Trauma response. Trauma response it is.” (13:31)
• Jason Tyler:
  • "Your brain can assign a dopamine response to stress. And...I think everybody's dopamine addicted." (08:20)
  • “As a leader, guess who you have as your leader? Ms. Problem Solver herself. It's just that simple, guys. It's not rocket science, I promise.” (13:17)
  • "I'm gonna start doing that to people. Anytime I see someone having a trauma response, I'm just gonna...name it. I'm gonna become so annoying in conversation. It's gonna be great." (13:45)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00–00:25: Mika on reinterpreting stress, the impact of trauma
• 03:01–04:13: Mika’s story—losing Amber, suppressing trauma, and personal consequences
• 07:31–08:20: Burnout, dopamine addiction, and acknowledgment in high-pressure work
• 09:26–10:36: Working in the Clinton White House—mission, team unity, and leadership lessons
• 11:55–12:54: Organizational structure, communication, trauma-informed leadership
• 13:58–15:06: Diversity, emotional safety, and high-performing teams
• 16:10–17:32: Where to start with trauma—to recognize, educate, and avoid unhelpfully “diagnosing” others
• 18:09–19:16: Resources and organizations founded by Mika—websites and platforms

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Mika's Resources & Contact Information

• Law Firm: LibertyLaw.com – Support for survivors and victims of crime and human trafficking
• Leadership Platform: Lion Hearted Leader – Training and trauma-informed leadership
• Advocacy Center: TheSoaringCenter.com – Legislative advocacy and restorative justice
• Social Enterprise: RadiantStarRoasters.com – Coffee company supporting women in the global coffee industry

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Summary:
This conversation is a moving blend of personal story and professional insight, illustrating how trauma—if left unaddressed—can shape and sometimes impede leadership, while also offering hope and practical tools for becoming more trauma-informed. Mika’s journey and candid advice empower listeners to recognize and address their own trauma, advocate for healthy organizations, and strive for collective success.

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Transcript

[Mika Star Liberty]

Stress can also be interpreted by your brain as enthusiasm or excitement. And so we can become addicted to that and we don't even understand necessarily what deeper impact it's having.

[Narrator/Introduction]

Mika Liberty is a resilient, influential and mission driven trial lawyer. She is the founder of Lion Hearted Leader, the Soaring center and Radiant Star Roasters focused on leadership, empowerment and positive change.

[Mika Star Liberty]

I learned the hard way that pushing down all of your trauma and not working to understand it or working through it can have a devastating impact on you as a person and as a whole. I was basically in bed unable to function because of all of the trauma I had taken on. It is so easy to learn how to protect yourself and to understand what your brain and body are doing so that you can keep going.

[Ad/Promo Voice]

It spans the globe like a super high cold Internet Elvis. Prescribe for free. Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone. It's not over until I win. The Living youg Legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy that's extraordinary. The impossible has been. Oh, that is sensational. Jordan, open chicken car with the lead. You said Paul is the fastest man on the planet. You can live your dream.

[Jason Tyler]

Welcome back to another episode, guys, of the Inside Success podcast. I'm your host, Jason Tyler and I am joined today by Micah Star Liberty. I got to make sure that I say the star there cuz she is the star of the episode that we just finished filming. So we just got out of finishing your episode. How are you feeling now on the other side of things, of sharing your story?

[Mika Star Liberty]

Good. I feel, I always feel like a weight is lifted whenever I talk about Amber. It's this weird combination of heavy and a sense of loss, but also buoyed because I get to talk about her and honor her memory.

[Jason Tyler]

And so just to give the viewers context, you know, Amber was a childhood friend of Micah's who was a victim of a serial killer. And so this happened very early on. And you know, one of the things that we spoke about a lot in your, in the interview was the concept of trauma and how to deal with it, how to be more informed about it, how to take on trauma. So talk to me a little bit about, you know, your journey with this very heavy trauma that happened to you so early on in life.

[Mika Star Liberty]

Yeah, I mean, honestly, for a long time, the trauma, I just kind of tamped down and kept it moving because, you know, it's not easy and I was young and didn't really know how to compartmentalize any of it. So I just didn't. I tried not to think about it. And what ended up happening is once I started working, I thought about it every day because I thought about Amber every day. So, you know, it's been a process and we talked about this in the episode, but, you know, not taking care of ourselves, not dealing with the trauma and trying to tamp it down, just, you know, little trauma, landmines get planted and you.

[Jason Tyler]

The body keeps score, right?

[Mika Star Liberty]

The body keeps score.

[Jason Tyler]

The body keeps the score.

[Mika Star Liberty]

And you never know when something is gonna come up. There are times where I have some response and I'm like, oh, that's a trauma response. And I didn't even know that was something I felt trauma over. So, you know, you just have to be cognizant.

[Jason Tyler]

You have to be cognizant. Like there's, I mean, we're in the, the age of information now, right? There's so much information readily available all over the place, but there's also a lot of misinformation. There's a lot of places that, you know, non credible sources. There's a whole economy that functions off of misinformation, but we're not going to get into that.

[Mika Star Liberty]

And the whole political system, but that's another.

[Jason Tyler]

That's stories for another day, which we. I do also want to touch on your history and politics. But the whole thing with trauma, right, is people need to be informed about what trauma is, how the body responds to it, what. What their body is doing without them. A lot of trauma responses you're not even cognizant of. Talk to me about some of, like, we talked about some, some instances where you had trauma responses to things that you didn't know they were trauma responses until you could go back and put a name to them.

[Mika Star Liberty]

Right?

[Jason Tyler]

So. So, like, talk to me about your initiative to bring education and bring trauma to the forefront of business and making businesses trauma ready, trauma responsive.

[Mika Star Liberty]

I just think it's so imperative, especially where we are in our society today. After the pandemic, everyone experienced all of this trauma and isolation and a lot of, you know, mental health issues because of what we went through. And it's, you know, I learned the hard way. I usually have to go through something to take the lesson away, but I learned the hard way that pushing down all of your trauma and not working to understand it or working through it can have a devastating impact on you as a person and as a whole. I mean, we talked about this a little bit, but I was basically, you know, in bed and unable to function because of all of the trauma. I had Taken on. And it's so easy for those of you out there who've experienced trauma. It is so easy to learn how to protect yourself and to understand what your brain and body are doing so that you can keep going.

[Jason Tyler]

And it's. It's funny that you mentioned, you know, when you were going through it, we. We might have called it a different thing, but we. The way that we refer to it now is, you know, you have burnout. Right, Right. And especially in a working situation like yours, where you're starting so many businesses, you have so many initiatives going on at the same time, burnout almost becomes like your dance partner. Right, Right. You're constantly doing this dance with. I'm approaching burnout. Let me keep a little bit away from. Or, you know, I'm just gonna lie down with burnout for a little bit, and then, you know, I'll be back to it in a little. But how. What advice would you have for people who are struggling with burnout? This is something that we spent a little bit of time on in the episode, and I think it's super important that we talk about it more because we're not talking about burnout enough.

[Mika Star Liberty]

Right. I think the first thing is don't be afraid of it. Don't be afraid to name it. Don't be afraid to confront. Confront it within yourself. Get to the root of what's causing the burnout, if you can. I think a lot of times it is easy for us to dismiss what we're experiencing and just say, oh, this is burnout, and this is normal, because this is what this job requires, or this is what this experience needs. I try to teach people that stress can also be interpreted by your brain as enthusiasm or excitement. And so we can become addicted to that. And we don't even understand necessarily what deeper impact it's having.

[Jason Tyler]

Your brain can assign a dopamine response to stress. And for. And a lot of people don't even really know that you can get dopamine from things that are causing your body stress. Right, Right. And, you know, I. I try to tell people a lot. Nowadays, I think everybody's dopamine addicted.

[Mika Star Liberty]

Yeah.

[Jason Tyler]

Nowadays we. We're constantly getting it from our phones.

[Mika Star Liberty]

Exactly.

[Jason Tyler]

We're constantly getting it from, you know, online validation people. I mean, you hear the term nowadays, people are like, oh, I'm chronically online.

[Mika Star Liberty]

Right.

[Jason Tyler]

That's not a good thing. And people wear it as, like, oh, you know, I'm just chronically online. Like, I have too many memes in my phone or whatever the Case may be, but it's a, it's an issue that I think we, we need to tackle in that our brains are assigning dopamine to things that we're not, we're not taking stock of. Right. I want to go. Let's press rewind for a second here. I want to go back. And this is kind of crazy, but you worked in the Bill Clinton White House.

[Mika Star Liberty]

I did, yeah. First term.

[Jason Tyler]

Let's talk about, let's talk about working in the White House because that's insane. Talk to me a little bit about just your experience being in. I know we had mentioned it in the episode of, like, how much people knew that, like how much the work meant.

[Mika Star Liberty]

Yes.

[Jason Tyler]

And that culture, what was that culture like?

[Mika Star Liberty]

It was a very tight knit group of people. And, you know, it's, it's incredible to watch everyone moving in the same direction to achieve a goal that's not about them, that's about the greater good. And, you know, say what you will, and I've said a lot about that administration, but hey, hey. But it really was one, a wonderful experience to see that, to see the camaraderie, to see the commitment, to see people so selfless that they were willing to spend hours and hours and hours and days and weeks helping the country move in a better direction in the

[Jason Tyler]

pursuit of this greater goal. Right, Right. It's. So when you think about. I think about this often because I'm, I'm here talking with people who are CEOs, leaders, and when I think about leadership, I think about. There's an analogy that I gave at, you know, a previous business that I had with a former business partner. And it was. We both have the same destination in mind, so we might as well just carpool.

[Mika Star Liberty]

Right.

[Jason Tyler]

And I use that, I use that analogy all the time when I'm working with people and we all want to go to the same place, like, hey, we might as well carpool. Let's get in the car together and we'll figure out a way that works for all of us.

[Mika Star Liberty]

Right.

[Jason Tyler]

When you're, you know, as a business owner and somebody who looks at a problem and in order to solve said problem, you know what? I'll start a business about it.

[Mika Star Liberty]

Yeah.

[Jason Tyler]

Which we should. We have to put that on a T shirt for you. Start a business about it. Because you.

[Mika Star Liberty]

I love that.

[Jason Tyler]

Start a business about it.

[Mika Star Liberty]

My friends who know me well. Yeah, absolutely.

[Jason Tyler]

Feel free to steal that one. I just want like 1% of the proceeds from that T shirt. That's all I. That's all I'm asking for. But as someone who, you know, you've created your law firm, you've created all these different businesses that have sprouted from that law firm. What is the importance of leadership and organizational structure within your businesses?

[Mika Star Liberty]

Leadership is super important to me and I think to every business because leaders can make or break a business. If we're just. Purely from an economic standpoint, there are decisions. How they treat staff, how well or poorly they take feedback from those around them.

[Jason Tyler]

I plead the Fifth. I will say nothing about that actually, in this. Well, never mind.

[Mika Star Liberty]

And they're easy tweaks to make and they're really the only way to have teams that are in high income earning or generating and client satisfaction and staff satisfaction. I mean, it's so easy to achieve those things if you are trauma informed and you have good communication skills.

[Jason Tyler]

Be trauma informed and have good communication skills. It's not that difficult. And another thing, it's something that I spoke with one of my clients from yesterday. Just listen.

[Mika Star Liberty]

Right?

[Jason Tyler]

Just listen out. Because your clients will tell you what's wrong with your business.

[Mika Star Liberty]

Right.

[Jason Tyler]

Your employees, your staff will tell you what's going wrong in the business.

[Mika Star Liberty]

Yes.

[Jason Tyler]

If you just listen, you will understand what problems there are. And then as a leader, guess who you have as your leader? Ms. Problem Solver herself. It's just that simple, guys. It's not rocket science, I promise.

[Mika Star Liberty]

But not every leader can. Can listen without taking offense or without putting up a wall. So I think trauma response. Trauma response it is.

[Jason Tyler]

I'm gonna start doing that to people. Anytime I see someone having a trauma response, I'm just gonna. Trauma response.

[Mika Star Liberty]

Name it.

[Jason Tyler]

I'm just gonna name it. I'm gonna become so annoying in conversation. It's gonna be great. I can't wait.

[Mika Star Liberty]

But yeah, I mean, that's a huge part of it. And because staff don't always feel safe, you know, emotionally safe, telling their, the person who signs their check what they think the problems are. But those are the employees you want. The other thing I see a lot is when we're, when we're trying to talk about diversity in workplaces and, you know, the elimination of bias and all of those things which have for some reason become controversial, but they should not be.

[Jason Tyler]

We don't need to.

[Narrator/Introduction]

Right?

[Jason Tyler]

I promise you. We could have a whole conversation, we could go off on a whole tangent about DEI right now. But I don't want to turn this into the political podcast.

[Mika Star Liberty]

Right, right. But the thing to remember is cohesive groups, groups where people feel safe to share outlier opinions or something based on their own experience, their lived experience. Those are the teams that make more money. Those are the teams that do better. So why wouldn't we be striving for those teams?

[Jason Tyler]

Exactly. And like, I'm a firm believer in human beings function better as a collective than we do individually. We live in such individualistic times right now. Everybody is trying to do everything on their own. When I first got my start in filmmaking, I thought I was a one man band. I can be the producer, the filmer, the editor, the audio technician, the lighting guy. I didn't realize until I had been on an actual film set and worked with real directors that I was working the job of like 15 different people.

[Mika Star Liberty]

Right.

[Jason Tyler]

And charging like maybe $1200 for it. And I was like, all right, we need to restructure, we need to figure this out, right? What, as we, as we kind of wrap up here, what advice would you have for somebody who is dealing with trauma? Or maybe they might not even know that they're dealing with trauma. Right. But they're experiencing the side effects of trauma and they don't know where to go for that help. What advice would you have for them?

[Mika Star Liberty]

There are a ton of resources online. I also wrote a book that has a bunch of chapters about how to recognize trauma, how to deal with it. One of the things that when I first started teaching folks how to be trauma informed is I would say, look, there's no script, but it turns out there can be. And if you have discovered that you think you have trauma in a certain area, take a look at the book, take a look at websites that are out there. There's also certification process. If you want to learn how to be trauma informed, there are organizations that will certify you. And it helps not just with your own identification of what you're experiencing, but like you said, you're just going to start telling people trauma. Right? Sometimes it takes other people to mirror for us what we're experiencing.

[Jason Tyler]

Approach that with caution because not everybody is going to be in the right mindset to hear someone say, hey, that's your trauma. Like you, you can ruin a relationship or two based off of that, based on even just naming it. Because some, some people, their trauma response to even calling it trauma is to disengage. Well, cut that off. I don't even want to approach that conversation.

[Mika Star Liberty]

Right, right.

[Jason Tyler]

Yeah.

[Mika Star Liberty]

It's not something other people should diagnose.

[Jason Tyler]

No, no, no, no, no, no. I only listen. I only do that, guys, because my dad is a psychologist. All right, let's preface with that. Let's all just, everybody calm down. Put your weapons away. And with that, as we kind of wrap up here, where can people go to find you online social? Is there an office they might want to go to if they're in the California area where they can look up very great law office? We need to make sure that we're. Where can they go? Where can they go online and where can they go in? You know, if we have any viewers in the state of California, where should they go?

[Mika Star Liberty]

Well, I'm going to give you all the website URLs.

[Jason Tyler]

All the websites, all right? And, you know, for our editing team, make sure we put these up on screen, leave them up there for a good long while so people can write it down and put it in their web browsers. All right?

[Mika Star Liberty]

LibertyLaw.com that's the law firm, and we help survivors and victims of crime and human trafficking. Lion Hearted Leader. That's the platform from which we do all of our leadership training and trauma informed training. Thesoringcenter.com Soar like a bird, like a phoenix. And that's where we do a lot of lead legislative advocacy. We do some restorative justice programs for people who would like to get accountability in certain situations, but litigation is not an option. And then we've got radiantstarroasters.com and that is a coffee company that supports women in coffee globally. We give 15% of every bag we sell back to organizations that help support women in the coffee industry.

[Jason Tyler]

That's what it was all leading up to. Guys, all I wanted was to make sure that everybody knows about the coffee. All right? The cure to trauma is caffeine. No, I'm, I'm joking. I'm joking. But with that, guys, that is another episode of Inside Success. Make sure that you guys go out and check out Micah Star Liberty's episode on Legacy Makers. It should be following this podcast episode very close behind. So just keep an eye out for that. But until the next time, guys, we will see you later there.