Nursing education program leaders face many obstacles in recruiting nurses to be instructors. The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study was to understand how and why nurses choose a career in education. Participants were recruited from three established nursing education programs in colleges located in the State of Washington. The volunteer sample size consisted of 12 nurse educators. Participants were contacted via email and asked to complete an in-person, Skype, or telephone interview to describe their journeys into the field of education. The data were analyzed using Colaizzi's model for data analysis of descriptive phenomenological studies to determine the motivating factors that lead nurses into the field of higher education. The intention of this study was to inform nursing program leaders about the factors that attract and retain nursing educators. The findings in this study included the pathways to their career taken by nurse educators and the common motivational factors that influence this choice. With this information, nursing program leaders may be able to construct a recruiting model designed to target those nurses who are most likely to be interested in a career in nurse education.