In the ‘Know’: Power of Data and Storytelling 

Sometimes the body knows even before the brain. That’s what happened to Garrett Johnson, who was working for the Kraken’s Sea Squad promotional team back when the 2024 NHL Winter Classic outdoor game was staged at T-Mobile Park. Johnson worked the Fan Village outside the ballpark while the Kraken and Joey Daccord shut out Vegas. He felt a little rundown from taking care of his parents, as his dad was recovering from shoulder replacement surgery two weeks prior and his mom from a knee replacement one week before that. He cheerfully made it through the day, though he wasn’t himself.

Driving home to Mt. Vernon took 90 minutes. Johnson determined this was an ideal night for getting to bed early. All went to plan until he couldn’t fall asleep -- tossing, turning, changing positions. Nothing worked. Plus, he felt peculiar, more restless than sick.

“I was getting this feeling,” said Johnson, looking off into a midpoint distance in a windowless main conference room deep inside Climate Pledge Arena’s epicenter. “I was like, ‘I should look at Teamworks online’ [a platform for sports organization operations and talent recruiting].”

Johnson grabbed his phone and called up the site while still in bed. His brain soon was catching up with his body’s signals.

“I saw the [arena’s] listing for the data analyst job,” said Johnson, his eyes back to our conversation. “It had been posted one or two hours before I saw it. I don't know what came over me, but I said to myself, ‘We're gonna get up and we're gonna apply for it.’”

He applied for the role before going back to bed. One day later, he got a message from Tom Conroy, the arena’s assistant general manager and senior vice president of operations.

“I interviewed a day after that,” said Johnson. “It was literally a whirlwind because I was laying in my bed, coughing and sneezing. I don't know about you, but there are moments in my life where I get that sort of feeling and, 100 percent, I can't explain it.”

Both Johnson, Conroy ‘Feeling’ It

Johnson, Sea Squad gear in hand to help entertain the home fans that night, showed up for his interview with Conroy in the arena’s epicenter conference room hours before a Kraken victory over Ottawa. Johnson had barely slung his gear to the floor and answered early questions when Conroy sensed his own feeling taking over.

“It's important that we go back to the genesis of the role Garrett now holds,” said Conroy. “When we first opened the building with the joint organizations [Kraken and Oak View Group]. We decided that NPS, or net promoter score, was going to be important to track and then narrated after the fact for rest of the organizations. Jacque Holowaty [former VP of employee and guest experience] did an amazing job at that in our first three years. After she departed, NPS tracking and narrating was kind of piecemeal, which was not working for us at the arena or the Kraken. So, I created the position and discussed it at length with Rosie [Selle, VP marketing for the arena]. We put the job description together, got it posted, and I heard from Garrett and two other people quickly. I spoke to Garrett and the two other people on the phone. With Garrett, I thought, ‘Oh, this kid works for Sea Squad’... I suggested he come in early on the next game night [Jan. 4] and let's talk.

“We were five minutes into the conversation. I knew I'd be offering him the job. It was Garrett’s passion, his quest for getting the data and his drive to present the data in a meaningful, progressive and productive way.”

On Career That Honors His Heritage

“Quest” is a superb word choice to frame Johnson’s persona. This is a young man who grew up in a family with an older brother, Travis, with Asperger syndrome while Garrett himself went face-to-face with dyslexia. His mother, Jessica Cisneros Johnson, advocated that an individualized education plan (IEP] be provided Travis only to discover it was not standard for students with disabilities in the early 1990s. She went all the way to the local superintendent to get an IEP approved.

Johnson was inspired by his mother, who in turn was inspired by her mother, Helen Cisneros, a first-generation Mexican-American who never forgot her modest migrant-parents’ roots, bringing clothing and food supplies to newer migrant-worker families in need in Skagit County.

Johnson hasn’t overlooked his own roots as it relates to his genetic makeup. “I think it took until college to fully realize how much privilege I have, because, complete transparency, my name is Garrett Johnson and I'm white presenting,” said Johnson. “I think it's unfair the benefits that I get compared to a lot of other people [of Mexican descent].”

Part of honoring his mom and grandmother was his intent to be the first in the family to earn a college degree, envisioning he would “make the most of it” by studying pre-law at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma. But a freshman-year multimedia writing class “completely changed my whole trajectory,” said Johnson, which took him to his present-day role as a data analyst who is part scientist and part storyteller. The writing prowess equally serves as a nod to his “moral compass” father, Mike, who wrote school newspaper stories about a woman’s right to choose. Johnson discovered that body of work in a storage box when helping clear out his late paternal grandmother’s home.

“I was battling if I was going to be a political science major or a geoscience major,” said Johnson. “What I loved about that writing class was it presented the rules, in this case Associated Press style. But there was still that opportunity for a creative part, right? We would usually have a 10-minute period in which we would just write a short story. I love the marriage of that artistry part along with the rules or data part. It drills down to what my role is to this day.”

Like many of us who cherish early-life mentors, Johnson credits a Pacific Lutheran professor (now emeritus), Robert Marshall Wells, with believing in the career path for which Johnson was destined even before the mentee knew it. Not the same as the body sometimes knows before the brain, but a similar concept.

“He kind of flipped my life,” said Johnson. “I’m not saying I was in a bad place before that. Be he really lit that fire in me, instilling a self-belief in my academics. There were so many students in my cohort whom he so positively impacted ... he was such a huge supporter of me. Anytime he noticed an opportunity with a conference or club [such as the school’s Media Lab], he would reach out and say you need to do it.”

Knowing the (Net Promoter) Score

Now about that NPS, or net promoter score. With his Sea Squad gear on the floor behind him (full props to sister Miranda, who alerted her brother to a posting for Sea Squad openings), Johnson recalls Tom Conroy saying, “This is a job that doesn’t exist” and “We’re gonna be laying down the tracks on the railroad as we go, but we will figure it out.” Conroy explained Johnson would gather data points via surveys of fans and promoters, constructing a narrative presentation. Then, he’d talk it through once a month on organizational calls with dozens of co-workers listening in.

“NPS is a simple number to determine if an event was a success or not,” said Johnson, who says a favorite part of his job is sending out emails that recognize the extra-effort work of guest services workers striving to make all Kraken and events fans happy with their experience. “We send out a survey [one for attending fans, the other for event promoters]. I get all those numbers and data to reach a final number that determines if we were a success or not ... I look for improvement in all cases...people can get bogged down on the negatives. I like to show progress and the wins, even when something doesn’t go 100 percent right.”

Back in his initial job interview with Conroy in early 2024, Johnson was thrilled about how the conversation went, but came out of it with a prescient feeling (again) that he would be “nervous, sweating and everything” about the required monthly NPS presentations to such a large group of Kraken and arena employees “because I wanted to do a good job.” To his truest self, he found a way through his first such on-the-job presentation with two thoughts: One about how he’d approach telling the story of the net promoter code for events, the other about his audience.

“Some people understand the survey comments, some people understand the numbers,” said Johnson. “Not everyone understands or relates to both. That’s where my job comes in. I learned fast from co-workers’ feedback they were interested in the net promoter score and the story behind it, that they loved learning about it. I can’t say enough about the support from the entire Kraken organization and Climate Pledge Arena. I couldn’t have told the stories without them. I love working with people who strongly believe in what they say and do. It takes me back to my grandma and my parents.”