Mark Iddon - Instinct

More from Awaiting Approval All episodes →

1. 

   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…

2. 

   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…

3. 

   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…

4. 

   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…

5. 

   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…

6. 

   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…

7. 

   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…

8. 

   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…

9. 

   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…

10. 

    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…