Podcast · Arts & Books

Awaiting Approval

by Adam Jennings hosts a podcast about the messy, human side of creative leadership · English · Arts & Books

What happens when seasoned creatives finally speak without filters? Hosted by Adam Jennings, a design leader with three decades of experience, Awaiting Approval invites creative directors, design leads, and experienced makers to share the work they’re proud of, the lessons they learned too late, an

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 1 hr 7 min
Latest: 8 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

8 Oct 2026 · 1 hr 15 min

Terri Williams - Trust

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 her notepad. That is not a metaphor. What…

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

S3 · E22 · 1 Oct 2026 · 1 hr 13 min
Guy Vickerstaff - Craft
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 V7 on his desk, and still…
S3 · E21 · 24 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 10 min
Katja Alissa Mueller - Identity
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 peace with not knowing where she’s going, and how long it took her to…
S3 · E20 · 17 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 28 min
Mikaela Calypso Dragon - Vision
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 too and want to help build it. We talk about the relationship between a…
S3 · E19 · 10 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 6 min
Roberto Rotondi - Patience
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 a foreign language in front of you, something…
S3 · E18 · 3 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 6 min
Julie Kennedy - Reinvention
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, helped build Betfair's design team, launched an e-commerce…
S3 · E17 · 27 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 21 min
Oriana Gaeta - Belonging
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 she’s most proud of. She also has a three month old puppy named Kira who ate a tissue during…
S3 · E16 · 20 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 28 min
Mark Iddon - Instinct
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 find the person in…
S3 · E15 · 13 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 6 min
Emily Court - Authenticity
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…
S3 · E14 · 6 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 30 min
Michael Glass - Legacy
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 minutes…
S3 · E12 · 4 Aug 2026 · 48 min
Awaiting Approval LIVE 2 - In The Room
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 most people overlook, and what it means to lead a…
S3 · E13 · 30 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 30 min
Lara Juriansz - Boldness
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. This conversation unfolds across two…
S3 · E11 · 15 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 17 min
Recruiter Roundtable - Part 2
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 how to make them work for you rather than against you, and about…
S3 · E10 · 9 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 34 min
Maria Nicholas - Service
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 ended in a 508-page…
S3 · E9 · 2 Jul 2026 · 57 min
Martina Hodges-Schell - Range
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…
S3 · 1 Jul 2026 · 5 min
An Invitation ...
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, nowhere to hide - followed by questions from the audience. In London, our guest is…
S3 · E8 · 24 Jun 2026 · 47 min
James Ferguson - Adaptability
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 play as…
S3 · E7 · 18 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 7 min
Maryam Cristillo - Love
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 of it. This conversation moves through some…
S3 · E6 · 11 Jun 2026 · 59 min
Tamora Petitt - Clarity
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 in the room long before…
S3 · E5 · 4 Jun 2026 · 54 min
Charles Cadbury - Conviction
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 talk about…
S3 · E4 · 28 May 2026 · 1 hr 6 min
Odeya Noble-Bougay - Continuity
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 goes somewhere new entirely. We talk about kindness as an…
S3 · E3 · 21 May 2026 · 1 hr 17 min
Nacho Zuccarino - Vulnerability
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 drag yourself into…
S3 · E2 · 14 May 2026 · 48 min
Debbie Millman - Becoming
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 genuinely curious…
S3 · E1 · 7 May 2026 · 48 min
David Martin - Curiosity
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 David believes education…
S3 · 30 Apr 2026 · 5 min
Season 3 Trailer & Cast Reveal
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 — Recruiter…
S2 · E18 · 2 Apr 2026 · 18 min
Awaiting Approval. Season 2, Episode 18 - Debrief
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 surreal. But this episode is not really about numbers.…
S2 · E16 · 19 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 18 min
Awaiting Approval. Season 2, Episode 16 : David Sheldon-Hicks - Awareness
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. David reflects on the early…
S2 · E15 · 12 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 30 min
Season 2, Episode 15: Lou Maxon – Care
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 as what we make. From there, we explore the erosion…
S2 · E14 · 5 Mar 2026 · 47 min
Awaiting Approval. Season 2, Episode 14 : Dan Onufrisyhn - Generosity
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…
S2 · E13 · 26 Feb 2026 · 1 hr 16 min
Awaiting Approval. Season 2, Episode 13 : Lucy Jackson - Discipline
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 York across…

About Awaiting Approval

Awaiting Approval is a English arts & books podcast from Adam Jennings hosts a podcast about the messy, human side of creative leadership. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Adam Jennings hosts a podcast about the messy, human side of creative leadership
Language: English
Category: Arts & Books
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 1 hr 7 min
Latest episode: 8 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1810757992
Rights: Adam Jennings

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