Looking for the official, snazzy and (potentially) more impressive introduction to my work?  My professional bio is here.

Hello again!

My name is Johanna but most people call me ‘Jo’ and you are welcome to as well.  I use she/her pronouns.

I am a music-loving, coffee-drinking, confidence and public speaking coach, communication expert, international speaker and space-holder, personal leadership maven, life coach trainer and educator. 

There are a great number of reasons why I’m glad you’re here.

I believe that there is vast, inherent beauty within you, that your uniqueness is something to be celebrated and that your happiness deserves to be your number one investment.

I believe in the power of cultivating more authentic, deep and grounded confidence (no “fake it ’til you make it” talk found here), sustainable personal leadership, meaningful communication and purposeful presence.  I believe that your voice, your ideas and the secret things you long for when your mind wanders all deserve to take up space in your life and the world. I believe in the power of your lived experiences showing you just as much about what you don’t want for your life as what you do, and in your ability to find unwavering worthiness in the core of who you are as you move towards bigger, better more aligned things for yourself, your life and the way you show up in the world.

I believe in you giving yourself permission to feel more than one thing at once.

And, in full honesty, I also have a lot of respect for the ‘jumble’; those confusing, sometimes hugely frustrating times when you know deep down that you are ready for things to look, feel and be different, and you know that you need to find more confidence, courage and connection than you’ve ever had before, but you’re just not sure if you can create that kind of clarity and momentum simultaneously.  

You don’t have to go it alone.

Here at Heart Sparks I am all about supporting you to elevate your voice and sustain a life that you love to live – through the extremes of its joys and challenges.  A life beyond the stories in your head about what is and isn’t possible, that breaks through societal pressures and others’ ideas about what is and isn’t okay for you, and, most of all, that honours where you’ve been without limiting where you’re going.

I’m here to cheer you on as you learn to feel the most confident you’ve ever felt and show up with the same loving support of yourself that you give to the people around you.

I’m here to remind you that you’re not losing your mind when your intuition whispers to you.

I’m here to see you cultivate strategies that will serve you for the rest of your life.

And, if you have a dream of being a public speaker, I want to see you on more stages. I’m here to pass you the mic and help you supercharge the potency of your message while harnessing your natural speaking gifts and connecting more powerfully with others.

You are enough.

I believe with every ounce of my being that you are whole and worthy of everything you want in life when you are no-one other than yourself.  I am talking to you, lovely.  You deserve respect, kindness, love and connection.  You deserve to set and achieve amazing goals that excite you beyond belief.  You deserve to build a wholehearted existence and also to have the courage and tools to change it at any time if it no longer serves you well. 

I’m here to remind you that your voice, experience and stories matter, and that you have the ability to share them more powerfully than you ever have before.

And I’ll never cage your heart.

I have no interest in societal stereotypes, labels or boxes.  I’m multi-passionate and far more complex than that.  You are, too.  When we drop the need for neatly defined containers, true depth, authenticity and wholeness emerges. 

Those who know me well will quickly tell you that I’m equal parts head and heart.  I’m fun and joyous, but also very real and raw. I’m highly intuitive, courageous and warm.  I read energy quickly and deeply, and I’ll care about you from the moment I hear your name.  

I’m also a mastermind at strategic planning development and implementation, a powerhouse of a communicator and your best friend in crisis response.

Just like you, I’m the sum of many parts. My life’s journey to date has been in learning how to confidently hold them all, all at once.

There are a few reasons why you’ll find me here at Heart Sparks:

+   I get my energy from working with people – there is nothing that excites, motivates or fulfils me more. Period.

I cannot build a house or sew to save myself, and despite wanting to be a nurse when I was four years old, I now feel a bit faint at the sight of blood. This is the work I was made to do. This is where I’m meant to be.

+   The Life + Confidence Hub, Speaker Society and Youth + Education Community collectively encapsulate my full life’s work.
As you move through those spaces and the invitations within them, know that you are witnessing the doorways to the fullest combination of my unique expertise and skills. This is more than a website.  They are more than service offerings.  You are more than a random human on the other side of a screen.  You are now a part of my world just as I am now a part of yours.  Welcome.  Let’s play!

+   I’d been wanting to work in a way that REALLY felt good for a very long time but I’d been feeling scared to change things up. I was hiding in fear and letting it be a form of procrastination.  Almost seven years ago there came a point (it was an overcast Tuesday) when I finally admitted to myself that it wasn’t right for me to encourage my clients to throw themselves out of their comfort zones in the direction of their strongest passions unless I was brave enough to do the same.  I’ve never looked back and this is why, dear new friend, I know you won’t either.

My professional background is in social work, counselling, crisis response, case management, service coordination, public media advocacy and leadership.  Before the ‘birth’ of Heart Sparks I spent ten years doing this work in not-for-profit, education and local government settings, the first seven of them as an after-hours street outreach worker, supporting many of our community’s most marginalised and oppressed young people and their families who were experiencing homelessness, displacement, alcohol and drug addiction, cycles of criminal activity, abuse, violence, generational trauma and/or chronic mental health conditions. 

I hold a B.A. Rural Social Welfare (majoring in Psychology) and have additional qualifications in counselling, family and professional mediation, professional supervision, conflict resolution, mental health, crisis intervention, emergency management, organisational leadership, project management and alcohol and other drugs work.  My multi-passionate mind loves to study and I’ve never received a qualification that I haven’t then actively then utilised through working in the community and with my clients.  When you work with me, you have ALL of my skillset and my experience at your side, including what has now been over a decade of building in a thriving business that sees me spend my years working with clients and speaking on stages all over the world.

I am also the Senior Trainer at the Beautiful You Coaching Academy, where I myself became a certified coach back in 2014!  As a trainer I teach around 300 incredible people from across the globe each year to become phenomenal, deeply ethical and integrity-led life coaches while building successful and sustainable life coaching businesses. Being a part of the Beautiful You Training Team is a joy.

I am at my best when I am my most honest, courageous and truest self, staying present in both my own and our collective joy, challenges and everything in between. This is why I now live my life with unashamed authenticity, though for a long time I lacked the confidence to do so. It is also why I will support you wholeheartedly to do the same.

It is okay to feel more than one thing at once.

I call both Melbourne and the Bellarine Peninsula in Australia home, alongside my hubby and our two rescued furry friends; Mishka the cat and Finley the dog. I am in love with beautiful Melbourne and its many nooks and crannies (particularly those that serve amazing coffee) but I will probably always remain a country girl at heart.  I grew up in the small town of Warracknabeal in north-west Victoria and feel most comfortable amongst the gumtrees, sitting by a bonfire.  I love to explore new places, step off the beaten track, get creative with fashion, sing loudly in the car and play the piano. 

My footprints are far from the first on this land.

Heart Sparks and all members of our team acknowledge that our workplaces sit on lands stolen from the Wathaurung, Woiwurrung, Boonwurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nations.  We pay our respects to Elders past present and emerging, as well as to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in our broader communities.  We also pay our respects to the true Indigenous land owners of the sites where our clients reside.  

Equity matters.

I stand for inclusion, equity, diversity and anti-racism and I am committed to the personal, organisational and systemic work required in order to create true justice, equity and liberation for all.  I am actively undertaking ongoing personal and professional development specifically in addressing my privilege, bias, and anti-racism, and I am committed to ensuring as diverse representation as possible in my work.

Inclusion underpins the core values of ‘Equity’ and ‘People’ at Heart Sparks.  My team and I welcome folks of all ages, gender identities and expressions, body sizes, sexual orientations, spiritual and religious beliefs and cultural backgrounds to our work, particularly those who hold an underrepresented identity.

We strive to be an inclusive and anti-racism organisation and to openly recognise our role as a white-led organisation in the long-standing oppression of people of colour.

Please read more about this commitment, alongside the vision, mission and core values of Heart Sparks as an organisation, here.

Many sparks, all of them yours.

If you’d like to contact me directly to say hello in real time, I’d love to hear from you.  You can reach out to me personally here.

If you are ready to unearth and own your truest self with unwavering confidence, connection and clarity while bringing more of what sparks your heart into your life, the Life + Confidence Hub is for you.  Come on in.

If you dream of being a confident, inspiring, engaging public speaker or gaining more traction as a sought-after speaker in your area of expertise, the Speaker Society has you covered.

If you work with young people or young adults and you are seeking a unique approach to personal growth and development that is both custom-made to suit their needs and full of techniques that will serve them for the rest of their lives, the Young People + Education Community is waiting for you.

If you are looking for a passionate and highly experienced speaker or podcast guest, the Speaking page is for you.

If you’re curious about becoming a coach yourself, you can find out more about my personal journey with coaching here.

If you are looking for my media page, you can find that here.

Meet Chloe

Chloe is the Administrative Assistant at Heart Sparks. She is my number one wing-woman and lives and breathes the Heart Sparks mission through everything that she does.

When she’s not helping out here at Heart Sparks, Chloe is a life coach and the founder of One Infinite Life where she supports her community with self-coaching and reflection.