Meet Welcome Passion's founder
My Background
You don’t chase passion.
You learn how to recognize your relationship with it.
There is a kind of work that holds you. The kind you return to. The kind that draws more from you without being forced and changes how you think when you’re in it.
Most people treat passion as something to find.
In my work, I challenge that idea.
Because passion isn’t a single moment or a destination. It’s an ongoing relationship, and that relationship is shaping how you work, what you pay attention to, and the decisions you make, whether you see it clearly or not.
I’m the Founder of Welcome Passion and a keynote speaker on how people understand and engage with their work.
Over more than twenty years, I've worked at the intersection of business and human behavior, leading talent at GE, The Home Depot, and JCPenney, and teaching at Indiana University, with academic training from DePauw (BA), Vanderbilt (JD), and Duke (MBA).
Today, I bring that perspective into organizations through keynotes and working sessions that help people see what has been shaping their engagement all along, and respond to it more intentionally.
Nicolette M. Johnson
My Approach
Think of this less as finding passion and more as learning how to read it.
Most people assume it’s something they have to uncover.
In reality, it’s already present in how you work, what holds your attention, and what keeps returning, even when it would be easier to ignore it.
My role is to help you see that more clearly.
Not by pushing for answers, but by creating the space to think differently about something people usually take for granted.
To cut through the noise, the expectations, and the assumptions about what your work is supposed to look like, so you can recognize what is already shaping your engagement.
We look at what has been there all along.
The work that absorbs you. The moments that sharpen how you think. The places where your standards rise without being asked.
The things you keep coming back to.
Not as instructions to follow, but as something to understand.
This isn’t about adding more.
It’s about making sense of what is already in motion, and asking whether the work in front of you is meeting you at the level you’re capable of.
There’s no pressure to have it all figured out.
But there is an expectation to be honest about what you’re seeing.
Because once you see it clearly, it becomes harder to ignore.
And from there, things begin to change.
My Services
KEYNOTES
Your Relationship with Passion (And Why It Matters More Than You Think)
Most people think of passion as something you find.
Something you either have or don’t. Something that shows up clearly enough to follow.
But that’s not how it works.
You’re already in a relationship with passion.
And that relationship is shaping how you work, what holds your attention, the decisions you make, and the direction your life takes, whether you see it or not.
In this keynote, audiences are introduced to a different way of understanding passion, one that moves beyond the idea of “finding it” and into recognizing how it’s already showing up.
Through a clear, memorable framework, participants begin to see:
where they are in their relationship with passion,
how it shows up in their day-to-day work,
why it often feels inconsistent or unclear
This isn’t about adding something new.
But about seeing what’s already there with greater clarity.
When that happens, people don’t just think differently about passion.
They start to recognize themselves in it.
Finding Your Passion (And What Gets in the Way)
People are told to find their passion.
Far fewer are shown how to recognize it, or what gets in the way once they do.
Because the challenge isn’t that passion is missing.
It’s that it’s often misread, overridden, or filtered through expectations about what it’s supposed to look like.
In this keynote, audiences learn how to recognize the patterns that point toward what genuinely engages them, and just as importantly, how those patterns are often dismissed.
We explore:
how passion actually shows up in real time
why it’s easy to second-guess or override
the internal and external forces that shape how it’s interpreted
Participants leave with a clearer sense of what they’ve been noticing all along, and what has been getting in the way of trusting it.
This isn’t about chasing something new.
But about recognizing what has been there and learning how to respond to it.
WORKING SESSION
Working Through Your Relationship with Passion
This session builds directly on the keynote and gives participants the space to work through what they’ve just heard.
Instead of introducing new concepts, we take the core idea, that you are already in a relationship with passion, and make it practical.
Using the framework:
Where You Are → What’s in the Way → What’s Next
Participants work through:
how their current relationship with passion shows up across their work
what has been shaping or distorting that relationship
what signals they’ve been noticing but not fully trusting.
This is not a training session.
It’s a working session.
People aren’t asked to “find” anything. They’re guided to make sense of what’s already present, and to see it with more clarity and confidence.
The result is not a single answer or decision.
It’s a shift in how people interpret their own experience, and that changes how they move forward.
THE HEART OF IT ALL
Whether you’re looking to bring this conversation into your organization or create space for people to think more intentionally about how they engage with their work, this is designed to meet you there.
This work helps people see what is already shaping how they show up and gives them a clearer way to respond to it.
Because when that becomes visible, work feels different.
Decisions become clearer. Attention becomes more intentional. What you choose to move toward starts to shift.
Keynotes
Starting at $10,000
Working Sessions (2-4 hours)
Starting at $15,000