Member since June 2026
Nicole Phillips has spoken to more than 30,000 people at over 200 events, and she has never once given a "just be positive" talk. She teaches teams and leaders how to catch the automatic thought before it costs them the room, the relationship, or the day, using a simple idea backed by real neuroscience: what you look for is what you see.
She built her signature keynote, Shift the Script, from a background most speakers don't have. She spent years anchoring the news in Milwaukee and Madison, then became a hospital chaplain, sitting with people through the worst hours of their lives. That combination taught her how fast a story reframes a room, and how to hold both hard truth and real hope without flinching from either one.
Nicole is the author of five books, including The Negativity Remedy (Baker Publishing), and hosts The Kindness Podcast, named by Oprah Magazine as a top happiness podcast. She has been featured on NBC Nightly News, the Hallmark Channel, HGTV's House Hunters, and Reader's Digest, and she is a two-time game show winner (The Price is Right and Wheel of Fortune, bonus puzzle: "A Positive Viewpoint").
She works primarily with healthcare and nursing teams, educators, women's groups, and public-facing corporate audiences who are tired, stretched thin, and done with talks that don't stick. Event planners bring her back because her sessions land immediately and her tools get used the next morning, not filed away with the conference notes.
She holds a journalism degree from UW-Madison and a Master of Divinity from Luther Seminary. She lives in the Raleigh, NC area and travels internationally for speaking engagements.
Ask me about kindness and I'll give you a thoughtful answer. Ask me about game shows and you'll see my actual soul light up. I won a car on The Price is Right. I won the bonus round on Wheel of Fortune and got a compliment on my shoes from Ryan Seacrest, which I have not stopped mentioning since. I once talked my entire family into filming an episode of HGTV's House Hunters and they still don’t trust me when they see me grab my computer while we’re watching TV together.
I've applied to The Amazing Race four times. They haven't cast me yet, but I train like they might call tomorrow, because for me "someday" isn't wishful thinking, it's fuel. If you want to see me genuinely giddy before I even open my mouth on a topic like mindset or resilience, just ask about my game show era. I will teach you the secret sauce of winning!
On my 40th birthday, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. My daughter Jordan was 11, and she wanted to fix it so badly. She couldn't, obviously. No one could. But she needed to do something, so she picked up a needle and thread and started sewing coffee cup sleeves, selling them in exchange for donations to the Susan G. Komen foundation.
She didn't raise a fortune at first. Just enough that she felt like she was in the fight with me instead of sitting on the bench, helpless. Then the national headquarters of Susan G. Komen heard about an 11-year-old sewing her way through her mom's cancer diagnosis, and they flew us to New York to speak at the top of One World Trade Center. Someone in that audience was a manufacturer. Before we knew what hit us, Jordan's coffee cup sleeves were sitting on the shelves of Walmart stores across the country.
She ended up raising more than $150,000 for breast cancer research and mobile mammogram units. Every dollar went to donations. She never made a cent for herself. But when it came time to apply to college, she wrote her essay about it and got a full ride to Duke.
Jordan couldn't change the fact that her mom had cancer. What she changed was how she carried it, and what she built out of the carrying. Our situation does not have to determine our state of mind. That's the whole idea I teach from the stage, and I got to watch it lived out by an 11-year-old with a sewing machine and a big heart.
Jordan couldn't hand me a cure, but she handed me proof that carrying something well is its own kind of healing.
In 2011, I was sitting poolside on a lounge chair, tired, a little hungover, and going through the motions of a summer I wasn't really present for. My toddler started sharing his Cheerios with the little girl next to him, the way toddlers do when they've decided you need to try something amazing. That's how I met her mom, a teenager who had one day off work and was thrilled just to be at the pool with her daughter.
I was there because I "had to be." She was there because she "got to be." That contrast wrecked me a little. Here I was, married to a college basketball coach, raising three small kids, and sliding toward something that looked a lot like alcoholism, and I couldn't find a single ounce of the joy this teenager had for an ordinary Tuesday at the pool.
We left around the same time, and something in me said give her cash. So I did. I handed her enough money to fill her car with gas and take her kid to McDonald's. But I went home that night and couldn't stop thinking about it. I pitched an idea to my local newspaper for a weekly column about kindness. They said yes, and I filled it every week for ten years.
Some weeks nobody sent me a story, so I had to go find one myself. That meant forcing my eyes off what was annoying or hard and onto what was generous or kind, even on days I didn't feel like it. I had no idea I was doing anything more than filling column inches. Turns out I was rewiring my own brain. Within a year, I'd quit drinking, quit smoking, dropped 30 pounds, and fallen back in love with my husband. Kindness duped me. I thought I was writing about other people's goodness. I was actually building new pathways in my mind and in my life.
That column turned into five books, The Kindness Podcast, and a career built on one sentence I still teach today: what you look for is what you see.
Culture is not a poster on the wall. It is how people act when they are tired, stressed, and one comment away from snapping. In this keynote, Nicole Phillips gives leaders and teams practical tools for catching the automatic thoughts that drive reactivity, misread intentions, and quiet disengagement, and choosing a different response instead. With humor, storytelling, and real brain science, she shows how the story running in someone's head shapes how they communicate, collaborate, and lead. This is not toxic positivity. It is a usable set of tools that lowers reactivity, protects trust, and keeps good people from checking out. Then she turns the focus forward, guiding the room through a "movie script" exercise to picture the next chapter of their work and take one intentional step toward it.
In this keynote, participants will learn how to:
After this keynote, participants will:
Our circumstances do not have to determine our state of mind. In this keynote, Nicole Phillips shares practical tools for catching the automatic thoughts that pull us into stress, frustration, and autopilot, and choosing a different response instead. With warmth, humor, and stories from her own life, including alcoholism, breast cancer, and rebuilding after her husband's serious car accident, she helps women feel calmer in tense moments and shift their perspective without faking positivity. Then she turns the focus forward, guiding the room through a "movie script" exercise to picture the next scene they want and take a real step toward it with intention. Women leave feeling lighter, more in control, and clear on one thing they can do to write what comes next.
In this keynote, women will learn how to:
After this keynote, women will:
Our circumstances do not have to determine our state of mind. Educators absorb more in a single day than most people carry in a week: the emails, the interruptions, the kid who is having a hard time, the meeting that could have been an email. In this keynote, Nicole Phillips gives teachers and school staff practical tools for catching the automatic thoughts that pull them into stress, frustration, and autopilot, and choosing a different response instead. With warmth, humor, and stories from her own life, she helps educators feel calmer in tense moments and shift their perspective without faking positivity. Then she turns the focus forward, guiding the room through a "movie script" exercise to picture the year they actually want and take one real step toward it. Staff leave lighter, more in control, and reconnected to why they walked into the building in the first place.
In this session, educators will learn how to:
After this session, educators will:
Our circumstances do not have to determine our state of mind. Nurses and healthcare teams work in environments they cannot always control: the staffing, the pace, the charting, the patient who is having the worst day of their life. In this keynote, Nicole Phillips gives healthcare workers practical tools for catching the automatic thoughts that fuel stress, compassion fatigue, and autopilot reactions, and choosing a different response instead. Drawing on her years as a hospital chaplain and her own experience as a breast cancer patient, she helps clinicians feel steadier in high-pressure moments and hold both the hard thing and the hope at the same time. This is not toxic positivity. It is emotional honesty with perspective. Then she turns the focus forward, guiding the room through a "movie script" exercise to picture the next chapter they want and take one real step toward it.
In this session, participants will learn how to:
After this session, participants will:
On my 40th birthday, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. My daughter Jordan was 11, and she wanted to fix it so badly. She couldn't, obviously. No one could. But she needed to do something, so she picked up a needle and thread and started sewing coffee cup sleeves, selling them in exchange for donations to the Susan G. Komen foundation.
She didn't raise a fortune at first. Just enough that she felt like she was in the fight with me instead of sitting on the bench, helpless. Then the national headquarters of Susan G. Komen heard about an 11-year-old sewing her way through her mom's cancer diagnosis, and they flew us to New York to speak at the top of One World Trade Center. Someone in that audience was a manufacturer. Before we knew what hit us, Jordan's coffee cup sleeves were sitting on the shelves of Walmart stores across the country.
She ended up raising more than $150,000 for breast cancer research and mobile mammogram units. Every dollar went to donations. She never made a cent for herself. But when it came time to apply to college, she wrote her essay about it and got a full ride to Duke.
Jordan couldn't change the fact that her mom had cancer. What she changed was how she carried it, and what she built out of the carrying. Our situation does not have to determine our state of mind. That's the whole idea I teach from the stage, and I got to watch it lived out by an 11-year-old with a sewing machine and a big heart.
Jordan couldn't hand me a cure, but she handed me proof that carrying something well is its own kind of healing.
In 2011, I was sitting poolside on a lounge chair, tired, a little hungover, and going through the motions of a summer I wasn't really present for. My toddler started sharing his Cheerios with the little girl next to him, the way toddlers do when they've decided you need to try something amazing. That's how I met her mom, a teenager who had one day off work and was thrilled just to be at the pool with her daughter.
I was there because I "had to be." She was there because she "got to be." That contrast wrecked me a little. Here I was, married to a college basketball coach, raising three small kids, and sliding toward something that looked a lot like alcoholism, and I couldn't find a single ounce of the joy this teenager had for an ordinary Tuesday at the pool.
We left around the same time, and something in me said give her cash. So I did. I handed her enough money to fill her car with gas and take her kid to McDonald's. But I went home that night and couldn't stop thinking about it. I pitched an idea to my local newspaper for a weekly column about kindness. They said yes, and I filled it every week for ten years.
Some weeks nobody sent me a story, so I had to go find one myself. That meant forcing my eyes off what was annoying or hard and onto what was generous or kind, even on days I didn't feel like it. I had no idea I was doing anything more than filling column inches. Turns out I was rewiring my own brain. Within a year, I'd quit drinking, quit smoking, dropped 30 pounds, and fallen back in love with my husband. Kindness duped me. I thought I was writing about other people's goodness. I was actually building new pathways in my mind and in my life.
That column turned into five books, The Kindness Podcast, and a career built on one sentence I still teach today: what you look for is what you see.
Culture is not a poster on the wall. It is how people act when they are tired, stressed, and one comment away from snapping. In this keynote, Nicole Phillips gives leaders and teams practical tools for catching the automatic thoughts that drive reactivity, misread intentions, and quiet disengagement, and choosing a different response instead. With humor, storytelling, and real brain science, she shows how the story running in someone's head shapes how they communicate, collaborate, and lead. This is not toxic positivity. It is a usable set of tools that lowers reactivity, protects trust, and keeps good people from checking out. Then she turns the focus forward, guiding the room through a "movie script" exercise to picture the next chapter of their work and take one intentional step toward it.
In this keynote, participants will learn how to:
After this keynote, participants will:
Our circumstances do not have to determine our state of mind. In this keynote, Nicole Phillips shares practical tools for catching the automatic thoughts that pull us into stress, frustration, and autopilot, and choosing a different response instead. With warmth, humor, and stories from her own life, including alcoholism, breast cancer, and rebuilding after her husband's serious car accident, she helps women feel calmer in tense moments and shift their perspective without faking positivity. Then she turns the focus forward, guiding the room through a "movie script" exercise to picture the next scene they want and take a real step toward it with intention. Women leave feeling lighter, more in control, and clear on one thing they can do to write what comes next.
In this keynote, women will learn how to:
After this keynote, women will:
Our circumstances do not have to determine our state of mind. Educators absorb more in a single day than most people carry in a week: the emails, the interruptions, the kid who is having a hard time, the meeting that could have been an email. In this keynote, Nicole Phillips gives teachers and school staff practical tools for catching the automatic thoughts that pull them into stress, frustration, and autopilot, and choosing a different response instead. With warmth, humor, and stories from her own life, she helps educators feel calmer in tense moments and shift their perspective without faking positivity. Then she turns the focus forward, guiding the room through a "movie script" exercise to picture the year they actually want and take one real step toward it. Staff leave lighter, more in control, and reconnected to why they walked into the building in the first place.
In this session, educators will learn how to:
After this session, educators will:
Our circumstances do not have to determine our state of mind. Nurses and healthcare teams work in environments they cannot always control: the staffing, the pace, the charting, the patient who is having the worst day of their life. In this keynote, Nicole Phillips gives healthcare workers practical tools for catching the automatic thoughts that fuel stress, compassion fatigue, and autopilot reactions, and choosing a different response instead. Drawing on her years as a hospital chaplain and her own experience as a breast cancer patient, she helps clinicians feel steadier in high-pressure moments and hold both the hard thing and the hope at the same time. This is not toxic positivity. It is emotional honesty with perspective. Then she turns the focus forward, guiding the room through a "movie script" exercise to picture the next chapter they want and take one real step toward it.
In this session, participants will learn how to:
After this session, participants will: