Success stories / Mia Henry
Mia Henry · Freedom Lifted
She teaches organizations how to share power. The CEO Collective® taught her how to use her time.
Meet the CEO
A justice leadership pioneer who spent two decades building power in organizations, then built the business behind her mission.
Mia Henry is the founder and CEO of Freedom Lifted, which supports justice-centered leadership development through online learning, training and coaching. Her conviction: the organizations fighting for equity in the world often struggle to practice it within their own walls, and understanding identity, power and liberation is how you change both.
Before Freedom Lifted, she was Executive Director of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College and founding director of the Chicago Freedom School. Her signature framework, the Power Flower, has become a foundational tool for hundreds of private, public and nonprofit organizations.
The goal
To stop doing everything herself, build a business that could grow without her in every role at once, and find a community of business leaders serious enough to give real feedback, not just encouragement.
Before The CEO Collective®
The mission was clear. The business infrastructure wasn’t.
01
Fingers in every pot
There was no clear line between the work she should do as CEO and the work she did because no one else was there to do it. She was making every business decision herself.
02
Time without a value attached
She was working hard, but without a way to tell which tasks moved the needle. The result was busyness without the momentum her mission deserved.
03
Wary of the wrong room
She had been in a mastermind that looked solid from the outside and wasn’t on the inside. Before joining, she read Racheal’s work, listened to the podcast and watched the community closely.
“There’s no feeling powerful in isolation. Even those who we think have all the power, when they’re lonely, they do not feel powerful. That’s what The Collective gives us: the ability to be seen, heard, valued, and safe.”
The 90 Day CEO Operating System® at work
What the system actually built for Mia.
Once Mia decided The CEO Collective® was the right room, she went all in. The 90 Day CEO Operating System® gave her a business framework to match a mission she had been building for years.
Phase 01
CEO Dates: planning as a practice
A protected, recurring block for working on the business instead of in it. The rhythm gave her a way to step back, assess and decide with clarity instead of defaulting to urgency.
“I love our CEO dates. I love the methodology you teach around the value of the task and where I shouldn’t be spending my time.”
Phase 02
Time and impact, connected
Every task has a value, and her time follows the highest-value work. With a rubric for where the CEO of Freedom Lifted should spend her energy, she could let go of the tasks that weren’t hers to hold.
“How I spend my time is directly related to the impact and the success of the business. Before I was just trying to do everything. I had my fingers in too many pots.”
Phase 03
A room that tells the truth
Mia teaches that power is built in relationship, and the Collective proved it true for business owners too: serious, values-driven women who give real feedback and hold each other to the work.
“Being in community with other really serious, focused, and humble women business leaders, I just felt very held and welcomed. I’m not alone.”
In her own words
What it means to lead the business the way she leads everything else.
I spend my life teaching organizations about shared power, about what it looks like to make sure everyone in a room is seen, heard, resourced and safe. And I came to The CEO Collective because I needed to apply that same quality of thinking to my own business, and I didn’t yet have the framework to do it.
Before I joined, I had been part of a mastermind that looked very solid from the outside. Once I was in it, I could tell it wasn’t. That made me very deliberate. I read Racheal’s work. I listened to the podcast. I observed the community. I was not going to step into another room that didn’t have integrity on the inside.
And here I was, not taking my own medicine in my own business.
The task value framework changed how I make decisions about my own calendar. I had been carrying too much myself, and not trusting the people around me to take on more. I give this advice all day in my work: let people lead, distribute the power, trust the team.
What the Collective gave me alongside the framework was a community I could actually be honest with, about the strategy and about the fear. There’s no feeling powerful in isolation. The community wasn’t a bonus. It was the infrastructure.
What’s different now
Mia’s biggest wins.
Result 01
Revenue nearly doubled in year one
“My revenue has increased a great deal. It really actually almost doubled since I started. That’s not the only indicator, but it’s a nice one.”
Result 02
Time finally connected to impact
“I take the time I spend so seriously. Now I know what the highest-value work is, and I protect my time for it.”
Result 03
Trusting others to lead with her
“I was not trusting people to help me as much as I do now. I give my clients the advice every day to distribute leadership and trust the team. Now I’m finally taking it myself.”
Featured episode · Promote Yourself to CEO®
Shared Power and DEI Work Done Differently In Your Business with Mia Henry
Mia joins Racheal to talk about the shift in leadership from top-down control to shared power, and what it looks like to build that culture inside a small business, including the Power Flower and why apology is a justice practice.
More member stories.
Built two businessesGabi Day“The contents are static, but the container can be flexible.”Read her story ↗
Built on her own termsJessica Sato“It gave me permission to pull myself outside the business and really think: what am I creating? Is this sustainable?”Read her story ↗
Zero clients from third-party platformsAmanda Edgar, PhD“It is the supportive framework around all the learning that helps you actually implement it in a way that’s healthy.”Read her story ↗There is no feeling powerful in isolation.
If you’ve been building alone, stuck in every role and carrying more than one person should, you already know this. The CEO Collective® is the room where serious, values-driven women business owners get real about what it takes to grow.