Awaiting Approval

Terri Williams trained as a radio broadcaster, ended up writing buggy buying guides for Argos at twenty as a non-parent trying to imagine what a parent would want to know, and has spent the twenty years since growing alongside digital in a way that very few people can claim. She has been the person with the plan when everyone else had opinions, the translator between engineers and end users, and the one asking why when everyone else was already moving on. She is now Lead Martech Product Owner at Vodafone Business, and she has get shit done written on...

After going to Australia in his early twenties - because Alan Wicker said, through the magic of Sunday evening television, that it was the most optimistic place on Earth - Guy Vickerstaff was called by a place called home. He came back to Scotland and eventually found his way into advertising the long way round, via market research, a direct marketing client, and a junior typographer role where he quietly decided he could do better than what he was seeing and just started doing it. He is now Creative Director at Bright Signals in Edinburgh, still has a Pilot...

Katja Alissa Mueller grew up in Switzerland, studied economics and law because it was the only option left by exclusion, lasted four years, and then walked into an internship at the main theatre in Zurich on what she describes as a complete whim. That year, she says, set up everything that followed, even though she had no idea it would at the time. She is now Head of Brand Design at Pliant, nineteen years into a career she has never once let go linear.

What comes through most in this conversation is how much Katja has made...

Mikaela Calypso Dragon has never done things the expected way. She grew up in Saigon falling in love with TV adverts because there wasn’t much else to watch, ran away from home twice trying to become a creative, and eventually left Vietnam entirely for what everyone assumed would be a short trip to study in the UK. She never went back. She is now a Creative Director, working with some of the biggest brands in the world.

This is a conversation about what it means to hold a vision so clearly that other people feel it to...

Roberto Rotondi grew up in Italy knowing he wanted to design, studied industrial design in Milan, and then spent the next two decades letting life take him somewhere he never expected. A redundancy became a move to the UK. A quiet nudge from his wife became the confidence to try. A manager in Taipei, who on his first day told Roberto that even native English speakers make mistakes and the only goal is to be understood, gave him permission to stop being afraid of his own voice. He is now Head of Product Design at Trinity College London, speaking...

Julie Kennedy learned to love design by walking the galleries of the V&A as a small child. She would walk around the galleries holding her granddad's hand, as he did his rounds as the Chief Warder. She went on to study sculpture, spend time dressing windows at Topshop during the IRA bombings, work at a tax office she hated, and eventually find her way to Yellow Pages, where she stayed for twelve years - by her own admission it was longer than she probably should have. Since then she has been the first UK designer hired by Amazon...

Oriana Gaeta grew up in Naples and stumbled onto design when making album covers for her friends. She didn’t know there could be a career in this kind of work, it was just a thing she kept doing. It took a degree she dropped, a year in London at 19, and a second attempt before she finally found her way to design properly. Since then she has worked at some of the best agencies in the world, including R/GA and on brands like Nike and Adidas. She is currently CD at Doc Martens doing some of the work sh...

Mark Iddon is Senior Commissioning Editor for Comedy Entertainment at UKTV, which means his job, in its simplest form, is to decide what gets made and what doesn’t. He has spent over 20 years in television, moving from making things to deciding which things get made, and somewhere along that journey he has developed a very particular set of instincts about people, about ideas, and about the difference between winning an argument and winning the thing that actually matters.

This is a conversation that goes somewhere unexpected and stays there. We talk about what it means to fi...

Emily Court is a freelance web and visual identity designer who works with solopreneurs, freelancers and microagency owners, and has built her entire practice around the idea that the client relationship should feel like a collaboration between equals, not a job interview she's perpetually trying to pass. She came to design via an unlikely route, through gift baskets, studio photography, teaching English in Korea, years of professional writing, and somewhere in the middle of all of it, a growing conviction that working for herself was the only version of work that was ever really going to fit.

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Michael Glass has spent 25 years refusing to settle. He taught himself design in the late 90s by opening Photoshop every single day and learning something new before he was allowed to close it. He went from managing bars in Australia to becoming the guy you called when you wanted something on the FWA. He spent a decade as the most senior design voice at Fantasy Interactive, one of the world's top 3 experience design agencies. He builds his own computers, runs a local AI trained exclusively on himself, and is currently renovating his bathroom ... which he started doing in the 45...

This one is different. No single guest, no slow burn, no deep dive. This is Awaiting Approval LIVE 2, broadcast simultaneously across three cities on one night, with people thirsty for creative insight in each room and a Clipboard of Truth to test the mettle of each guest.

What made it into this edit is worth knowing about. Kris on the most ridiculous feedback he has ever received, and what it actually takes for a purpose-driven agency to earn that label rather than just claim it. Gray on what he genuinely looks for in a creative hire that...

Lara Juriansz was born in Sri Lanka, grew up in Singapore, studied in Sydney, built her career in London, and is now Creative Director at TBWA Media Arts Lab in LA, working exclusively on ... well, let’s just say a very well known brand. She has said yes to almost every significant change that has come her way, not because she was certain, and not because she wasn’t scared, but because she has learned, repeatedly, that the floating feeling eventually settles, and that the benefits and lessons learnt that come after are almost always worth the leap.

Th...

Over a thousand questions came in from the audience. Six recruiters came back. And within the first few minutes, Tom Scott, said what a lot of people in the industry are quietly thinking: we talk about it every single day, and it would be really nice not to for an hour. And so the panel voted to ban AI from the conversation.

What followed was one of the most honest conversations this show has produced, about what the hiring market actually feels like right now, about money and how to talk about it, about nonlinear paths and...

Maria Nicholas grew up between continents, between cultures, and between disciplines, and has spent her career making that range work for her rather than against her. She came into UX from advertising and brand design, learned to code in a three-month bootcamp where she didn’t see the sun, and built her leadership philosophy around a simple idea: a good designer facilitates great decisions out of other people, they don’t arrive with all the answers. She is also, quietly and on her own time, the guardian of her father’s musical legacy, a project that took ten years and en...

Martina Hodges-Schell has spent thirty years moving through design, from advertising in Germany at the dawn of the web, through Amazon and Yahoo in their early mobile years, to pioneering UX consultancies and a six-year run helping organisations build genuinely collaborative product teams. She is also an equine coach, working with horses as unfiltered mirrors for how leaders actually show up, beneath whatever they intend to project. It is an unusual range, and it turns out to be exactly the point.

This conversation moves between the very grounded and the genuinely surprising. We talk about what a...

Hey, it’s Adam. This is a short bonus episode because I want to talk to you about something I’m really excited about, and I think you might be too.

On July 23rd, Awaiting Approval LIVE is happening again. Live, in person, in three cities at the same time: London, San Francisco and New York City.

I’ll be hosting the London room. Amy Khan is hosting San Francisco. Maryam Cristillo is hosting New York. And each room has a special guest who’s going to face the Clipboard of Truth - rapid-fire questions, no prep...

James Ferguson has spent his career moving towards things that excite him rather than away from things that don’t. From a Scottish design agency at sixteen, to building Skyscanner’s design system, to shipping interaction work at Atlassian from the other side of the world, to leading product and creative design at OVO Energy, he has consistently backed his instincts and figured out the rest on arrival. This year he discovered improv theatre, threw himself in without overthinking it, and is absolutely loving it.

What comes through most in this conversation is how much James believes in p...

Maryam Cristillo grew up between cultures and continents, studied anthropology and art in the same breath, and has spent her career building creative teams at places like Victoria’s Secret, Naadam, and now Lindt, where she gets to do creative work on chocolate, which she will tell you is exactly as good as it sounds. She also runs a seventeen acre homestead in Maine with her husband, a hundred chickens, and two kids who roam the property wearing bells so she can hear where they’ve got to. There is a lot of love in how she talks about all...

Tamora Petitt has spent 25 years helping people find their way through complex experiences, from redesigning one of the internet’s most visited health tools to building UX teams from scratch, teaching over 200 career changers the craft, and quietly applying design thinking to everything around her, not just the screen in front of her. She started out as a dancer. That turns out to explain a lot.

What comes through most in this conversation is how much clarity Tamora has about what the work is actually for. We talk about why the people commissioning the work need to be...

Charles Cadbury has spent 25 years building things at the edge of what’s possible. He created one of the first voice-enabled hotel concierge systems, invented voice-activated audio advertising, won the global Alexa Cup, and has spent the last decade quietly convinced that the way we talk to technology is about to change everything. He also watches the sunset every Thursday, without fail, with someone worth talking to. That alone tells you so much about him.

This is a conversation about conviction, the kind that keeps you building in a direction long before the world catches up. We ta...

Odeya Noble-Bougay returns. If you heard her in Season 2, you already know why. If you didn’t, go back and find it, then come here. Odeya thinks in ranges rather than binaries, leads with a generosity that feels entirely natural rather than performed, and has a way of reframing a question that makes you wonder why you were asking it the other way round in the first place. She was the obvious choice to bridge Season 2 into Season 3. Continuity, in every sense.

This conversation picks up where the last one left off, which is to say it go...

Nacho Zuccarino - Vulnerability

Nacho Zuccarino has lived several careers in one lifetime. He started out teaching metaphysics in Buenos Aires, moved into advertising, spent a decade in Silicon Valley working at orgs like Google and Netflix, helped launch Starlink with SpaceX, and has spent the last two years building at the intersection of creativity and AI. He is restless, warm, and deeply, disarmingly honest. And he will tell you, without hesitation, that he is still a broken kid.

This conversation goes to places neither of us expected. We talk about what it means to...

Debbie Millman has spent over 20 years interviewing the world’s most creative people, built one of the most celebrated design podcasts in existence, written a number of highly acclaimed books, co-founded the Masters Program in Branding at the SVA, and helped shape how an entire industry thinks about craft, identity, and what it means to do meaningful work. She is warm, considered, and disarmingly honest. And she is, by her own admission, still very much in the process of becoming.

What struck me most in our conversation is how someone who has achieved so much remains so ge...

David Martin founded Fantasy Interactive before most people knew what interaction design was. He helped shape the visual language of operating systems used by billions, built one of the most influential creative agencies of its era, and worked with some of the biggest names in tech and culture. He’s also a pilot, a go-kart mechanic, a consciousness obsessive, and a dad who quit the nine-to-five to be trackside with his eleven-year-old son. He is, in the best possible way, a lot.

This conversation goes everywhere. We talk about ADHD as a superpower and a saboteur, why Da...

Season 3 of Awaiting Approval is here.

22 episodes. 22 conversations. 22 themes. One season.

Starting May 7th.

Watch the trailer now.

E1 — David Martin — Curiosity — 7th May

E2 — Debbie Millman — Becoming — 14th May

E3 — Nacho Zuccarino — Vulnerability — 21st May

E4 — Odeya Noble-Bougay — Continuity — 28th May

E5 — Charles Cadbury — Conviction — 4th June

E6 — Tamora Petitt — Clarity — 11th June

E7 — Maryam Cristillo — Love — 18th June

E8 — James Ferguson — Adaptability — 25th June

E9 — Martina Hodges-Schell — Range — 2nd July

E10 — Maria Nicholas — Service — 9th July

E11 — Recruite...

Season 2 of Awaiting Approval comes to a close with something a little different.

No guest this time. No one-word theme attached to a single conversation. Just me, stepping back to look at what this season became.

And honestly… I’m still a bit stunned by it.

Since launching the show in summer 2025 with no marketing spend, the podcast has grown far beyond anything I expected. More than 10,000 listens. Charting in over 15 countries. And not a single day since August 2025 where it hasn’t appeared somewhere in the charts.

That still feels surrea...

David Sheldon-Hicks, founder of Territory Studio, closes out Season 2 of Awaiting Approval with a conversation about awareness… and what it really takes to build something that lasts.

We start in the garden with a hot drink. After long stretches in dark studios and edit suites, David will take any excuse to get outside. From there we move into the organised chaos of creative life: shelves of unread books, piles of film scripts waiting to be finished, and the strange comfort of a workspace that is never quite as tidy as the designer in you wants it to be...

Lou Maxon returns to Awaiting Approval for part two of our conversation, and this time the theme is care.

We meet in a metaphorical Bryant Park with Mountain Dew in hand and quickly move beyond nostalgia into something deeper: what it really means to lead with kindness in an industry obsessed with speed, scale, and minimal viable products.

Lou shares the story of the Mr. Rogers figurine that sits on his desk - a daily reminder that creativity is about moving between reality and imagination, and that how we treat people matters just as much...

Dan Onufrishyn is Director of the Creative Leadership Program at Miami Ad School. But before the title, before the CV, before the impressive brand list, there is something simpler running through this conversation: generosity.

We start on a nature walk with green tea in a thermos. Mountains, sketchbooks, laptops, stream-of-consciousness doodles. It quickly becomes clear that Dan thinks in systems, in patterns, in long arcs. His career moves the same way. From Denver to New York. From School of Visual Arts to ESPN. From broadcast graphics in Times Square to J.P. Morgan, WPP, healthcare consultancies, sports...

Lucy Jackson is the Founder and Chief Clarity Officer at Studio Jackson. She’s also a brilliant example of what happens when you back yourself, even when the plan isn’t fully formed yet.

We start with a metaphorical drink in an English country pub and quickly get into Lucy’s love of flexibility, autonomy, and working in whatever spot has the best light. From there, she takes us through a career that reads like a masterclass in brand-building, licensing, and creative leadership, from designing chocolate packaging in London to building global programmes and leading creative in New Yo...

Sandra Gonzalez didn't take the expected route into design leadership. She started in engineering, moved into education, product, and front-end development, then taught herself UX by building her own mobile app startup, intentionally designed to give her hands-on experience as a mobile UX designer and help her break into a UX career. That same conviction runs through everything she shares in this conversation: you can design your own future, but you have to be willing to claim it.

Sandra is the founder of UX for Change and the UX Director at Trustpilot, and this episode explores territory...

Hiring in 2025? Brutal. Struggle. Chaos. Messy. Exciting.

In this special bonus roundtable episode, Adam is joined by five leading recruiters and talent partners – Laura Baker, Erica Fortgang, Sam Gale, Meg Rye and Jared Tredly – for an unfiltered state-of-the-market conversation about what’s really happening in design hiring right now.

This isn’t a tips-and-tricks episode. It’s a frank, human discussion about ghosting, burnout, toxic leadership, AI expectations, neurodiversity, layoffs and what candidates are actually up against. It’s also a moment of accountability – recruiters reflecting on their own practices, pressures and blind spots.

One thing is...

By day Odeya Noble-Bougay is Director of Product Design at Aviv Group, but at heart she is a maker. Someone who thinks with her hands, listens deeply, and believes that creativity is as much about care and connection as it is about output. Her journey spans sound engineering, visual communication, early usability work, telecoms at massive scale, property tech, and leading large, pan-European design teams through constant change.

In this episode, Odeya joins Adam for a gentle, reflective conversation about light – how it’s created, how it’s shared, and how leaders can help others shine. She talks...

William Barraclough has built a creative career driven less by formal pathways and more by instinct, curiosity, and a willingness to try things before knowing where they might lead. Now Head of Product Design for International Wealth and Premier Banking at HSBC, his journey spans skateboarding, DJing, restaurant work, early digital agencies, global brands, and leadership roles earned without ever studying design formally.

In this episode, William joins Adam for a wide-ranging, thoughtful conversation about curiosity as a creative force. He reflects on growing up between cultures, finding creativity through motion, music, and experience design, and discovering...

Hardy Sidhu is the Founder and CEO of Format-3, but labels have never sat comfortably with him. Designer, strategist, business builder, father, philosopher…

Hardy has moved fluidly through roles and identities since entering the industry as a teenager, driven less by titles and more by a constant need to feel, question, and stay awake to the moment he is in.

In this episode, Hardy joins Adam for a raw, expansive conversation about presence, discomfort, and what it really means to be alive inside your work. He talks about growing up working class in West London, bu...

Angela Arnold has built her career by listening deeply. To herself, to others, and to the quiet signals that tell you when something feels right… or when it doesn’t.

As Head of Product Design at Genomics England, her work sits at the intersection of craft, care, and impact, shaping experiences that matter in some of the most sensitive and complex human contexts.

In this episode, Angela joins Adam for a thoughtful, warm, and deeply reflective conversation about creative leadership, instinct, and trust. She shares how curiosity and gut feeling have guided her decisions, from navi...

Joel Gill has lived several creative lives in one. Musician, engineer, global design leader, single father, mentor, and now Chief Experience and AI Officer at Experience Artisan. His story stretches from hiding in a school music room and becoming a session synth player & pianist in 1980s London, to shaping early digital at British Airways, to leading design inside megacorps like Shell, HSBC and S&P Platts—while also contributing his craft to teams across Barclays, WPP, Santander, Hyatt, Sapient, Hogarth Worldwide, Vodafone and many others. Through it all runs a single thread. Integrity. Show up. Experiment. Tell the truth. Lo...

Venessa Bennett has built a career that mirrors the evolution of digital itself. She is now Global Director of UX at Dye & Durham, but her journey began in graphic information design, moved through early digital agencies, transport consultancies, comparison sites, and eventually into design leadership, where she found her true sweet spot. Her story is one of intentional growth, constant reinvention and learning how to listen to her instinct.

In this episode, Venessa joins Adam for an honest, energetic conversation about the path from junior designer to global design leader. She shares how she first stepped into...

In this episode of Awaiting Approval, Adam sits down with Hema Meta for a deeply honest, heart-first conversation about what it means to keep going when life and work both feel heavy. It is a quiet, powerful episode about bravery in the very ordinary moments - telling the truth about how you feel, asking for help, and staying soft in a world that keeps hardening its edges.

Across the hour, Hema lets herself be seen. There are pauses, emotion, and a lot of reflection. It is not a polished “success story” as much as a real one. The...

Anjali Gajera Patel has lived multiple creative lives across India, the UK and now San Francisco, where she is Director of Product Design at Ancestry. Her story spans advertising, freelancing during a global recession, self-taught UX, major in-house roles at Clorox, GAP and Kodak, and the cross-continental journey that eventually led her to one of the most loved consumer brands in the world.

In this episode, Anjali joins Adam for a warm, honest and deeply human conversation about finding strength through shifting careers, immigration, recession, personal loss and the rapid pace of the tech industry. She shares...