This work comes from the inside.
Not from a textbook, but from 20+ years of living and leading inside high-stakes, mission-driven environments — and from sitting in both chairs.
The story behind the framework.
My name is Laurie Bailey, and I hold a doctoral degree with more than 20 years of experience building and leading in high-stakes, mission-driven environments. That includes work as a Behavior Modification Specialist with Our Father's Children — one of the most formative experiences of my professional life.
Along the way, I became a practitioner in trauma-informed care. Not because it was required, but because I kept watching what happened when leaders — good, well-intentioned leaders — didn't understand how the nervous system works. I watched people leave. I watched teams break down. I watched promising professionals shut down and disengage, and I watched managers wonder why, with no framework to help them understand what they were actually seeing.
I also learned from the other side. I have led under difficult, unpredictable leadership that created real harm — not through malice, but through unawareness. That experience shaped my understanding of what it feels like when the leader above you doesn't know this work. It is also what convinced me that trauma-informed leadership is not a soft skill. It is a survival skill — for teams, for organizations, and for the people who choose this work because it matters.
The work crosses borders.
Every year, I travel to Rwanda to teach trauma-informed care principles to educators at Rwanda Children Christian School, serving children from pre-K through 8th grade — children who carry histories the world should be ashamed of, and who sit in classrooms every day with teachers who want to reach them but often don't yet have the language or tools to do it.
Teaching through Kinyarwanda and English translation, in a culture that has been shaped by profound collective trauma, has taught me more about the universality of this work than any book or certification program.
A teacher once told me: "I have always known that the frightened child cannot learn. I did not know I was allowed to say it." That sentence is the reason this book is being written.
Follow the Rwanda Mission →The experience behind the work.
20+ years in high-stakes clinical and mission-driven environments. Behavior Modification Specialist, Our Father's Children. REDCap administrator. Budget and grant justification.
Trained in trauma-informed principles. International teaching experience. Curriculum design rooted in neuroscience, attachment theory, and restorative practice.
Extensive experience developing educational curricula, workshops, and learning programs for healthcare professionals, researchers, and educators across settings.
"Intention is not the whole story. Impact is also the story."
— Leading Safely
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