Podcast
Awaiting Approval
Hosted by Adam Jennings hosts a podcast about the messy, human side of creative leadership · EN
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, and the messy, human truth of leadership.
Awaiting Approval is a Cordial Fox production.
Hosted by Adam Jennings.
Produced by Adam Jennings & Jasmin Egner
growwithadamjennings.substack.com
growwithadamjennings.substack.com
22episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
An Invitation ...
Yesterday00:05:24Tap to summarizeHey, 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 David Sheldon-Hicks, CEO and Co-Founder of Territory Group. If you’ve seen Blade Runner 2049, Dune, Prometheus, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Batman, Star Wars or Avengers … David and his team designed the screen worlds inside those films.In San Francisco, it’s Gray Joyce. 25+ years across Google, Visa, YouTube, Samsung, Netflix, HP and Gap. Now CCO and Managing Partner at Thedas.And in New York, it’s Sunny Stafford. Creative and brand executive with 20+ years across Victoria’s Secret, BareMinerals, WholeFoods and 1-800-Flowers. Now a fractional CMO who believes the divide between creative and commercial teams is the most expensive myth in modern marketing.So, why am I doing this?Because this podcast has always been about what happens when creative leaders are honest with each other. And that works brilliantly in a recorded conversation between two people. But there’s something different about a room. About being physically present. About hearing someone answer a question they weren’t expecting, in real time, with 30 other people watching.I am planning to record the whole thing, and yes, it’ll probably become an episode. So you might be thinking, why not just wait and listen later?And here’s my honest answer: because it won’t be the same.The recording will capture what was said. But it won’t capture what it felt like to be in that room. The moment someone laughs before the guest has finished their answer because everyone knows what’s coming. The energy of watching someone genuinely think before they respond. The conversations you’ll have with the person next to you during the break. Those things don’t make it into the edit.And that’s really what this is about. It’s not just watching … it’s being part of it.If you come, you’ll meet the guest and the host in your city. You’ll be in a room with other creative leaders who care about the same things you do. You’ll have the chance to ask your own question. And every single person in the room gets an exclusive “I Was In The Room” pin badge that you cannot get anywhere else - not online, not afterwards, not ever.Depending on which city you’re in, there are other goodies too - in New York, for example, there’s chocolate and wine. Each city has its own thing.There are only 30 seats per city. Tickets are twelve pounds, roughly fifteen dollars. And if cost is a barrier, bursaries are available - just message me directly.We start in London at 7pm, hand over to San Francisco at 11am, then to New York at 2pm, before coming back to London to close the night. If you’re in one room, you’ll see and hear the other two cities live.And if you’re not in London, San Francisco or New York, there will be a live stream so you can still be part of the evening. But if you are in one of those cities - be in the room.BUY YOUR TICKETS HERE: https://www.eventbrite.com/cc/awaiting-approval-live-4847406 Just click on the city of your choice. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit growwithadamjennings.substack.com/subscribe
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James Ferguson - Adaptability
1w ago00:47:12Tap to summarizeJames 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 a serious thing. Not play instead of rigour, but play as the condition that makes rigour possible. We talk about what it means to celebrate failure out loud, about why not bringing your whole self to work earlier in your career is a kind of loss worth naming, and about what happens when you stop worrying quite so much about what everyone else thinks. There is also a peanut, or possibly a potato, that sits on his desk and occasionally gets held up to the camera in large meetings just to see who is actually paying attention.If you’re feeling stuck, or just want to think out loud about where you’re headed, you don’t have to figure it out on your own. I offer free 15-minute conversations for anyone who wants to talk through what’s in front of them. Whether that leads to working together or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve got someone in your corner, even for 15 minutes.Head to http://www.growwithadamjennings.com and book a call.I’d genuinely love to hear from you.Want to support Awaiting Approval?Remember to rate this episode, and subscribe to the show.And you can get your hands on amazing Awaiting Approval caps, mugs and more, here: https://adam-jennings-shop.fourthwall.com/en-gbp This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit growwithadamjennings.substack.com/subscribe
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Maryam Cristillo - Love
2w ago01:06:45Tap to summarizeMaryam 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 unexpected and tender places. We talk about a stutter she overcame with the help of a stranger her father introduced her to, about her mother scrubbing restaurant toilets to give her children a different life, and about a poster covered in ampersands that has quietly shaped how Maryam thinks about ambition ever since. We talk about leading creative teams with real care, about learning the difference between empathy that helps and empathy that overwhelms, and about why investing in yourself sometimes means stepping outside the four walls of wherever you happen to work. Underneath all of it is the same through line: people, properly seen and properly cared for, are the whole point.If you’re feeling stuck, or just want to think out loud about where you’re headed, you don’t have to figure it out on your own. I offer free 15-minute conversations for anyone who wants to talk through what’s in front of them. Whether that leads to working together or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve got someone in your corner, even for 15 minutes.Head to http://www.growwithadamjennings.com and book a call.I’d genuinely love to hear from you.Want to support Awaiting Approval?Remember to rate this episode, and subscribe to the show.And you can get your hands on amazing Awaiting Approval caps, mugs and more, here: https://adam-jennings-shop.fourthwall.com/en-gbp This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit growwithadamjennings.substack.com/subscribe
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Tamora Petitt - Clarity
3w ago00:59:24Tap to summarizeTamora 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 the final presentation, about the difference between asking for approval and asking for alignment, and about what happens when you start treating the relationships around your work with the same care you bring to your users. There is also a redesigned symptom checker that is still live today, a six-year-old vocabulary change that reframes every stakeholder meeting it touches, and a lesson learned on the floor of a Target store that has never left her.If you’re feeling stuck, or just want to think out loud about where you’re headed, you don’t have to figure it out on your own. I offer free 15-minute conversations for anyone who wants to talk through what’s in front of them. Whether that leads to working together or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve got someone in your corner, even for 15 minutes.Head to http://www.growwithadamjennings.com and book a call.I’d genuinely love to hear from you.Want to support Awaiting Approval?Remember to rate this episode, and subscribe to the show.And you can get your hands on amazing Awaiting Approval caps, mugs and more, here: https://adam-jennings-shop.fourthwall.com/en-gbp This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit growwithadamjennings.substack.com/subscribe
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Charles Cadbury - Conviction
4w ago00:54:16Tap to summarizeCharles 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 what it actually takes to bet a business on a technology that isn’t ready yet, about the difference between brands that will own the voice era and those that will be left scrambling, and about why the most important thing you can do, in work and in life, is stay genuinely curious about the person in front of you. Charles has a way of making the future feel less frightening and more like something worth leaning into. Don’t be scared, he says near the end. Be excited.If you’re feeling stuck, or just want to think out loud about where you’re headed, you don’t have to figure it out on your own. I offer free 15-minute conversations for anyone who wants to talk through what’s in front of them. Whether that leads to working together or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve got someone in your corner, even for 15 minutes.Head to http://www.growwithadamjennings.com and book a call.I’d genuinely love to hear from you.Want to support Awaiting Approval?Remember to rate this episode, and subscribe to the show.And you can get your hands on amazing Awaiting Approval caps, mugs and more, here: https://adam-jennings-shop.fourthwall.com/en-gbp This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit growwithadamjennings.substack.com/subscribe
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Odeya Noble-Bougay - Continuity
May 2801:05:36Tap to summarizeOdeya 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 act of noticing, about what it means to hold space for the people around you without losing the thread of what you’re trying to build. We talk about why things are never as clean as the framework suggests, and why that is not a failure of process but simply the nature of real work. And we talk about the moment a CEO said something to Odeya so simple it has stayed with her ever since. If there is doubt, there is no doubt.If you’re feeling stuck, or just want to think out loud about where you’re headed, you don’t have to figure it out on your own. I offer free 15-minute conversations for anyone who wants to talk through what’s in front of them. Whether that leads to working together or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve got someone in your corner, even for 15 minutes.Head to http://www.growwithadamjennings.com and book a call.I’d genuinely love to hear from you.Want to support the Awaiting Approval?Remember to rate this episode, and subscribe to the show.And you can get your hands on amazing Awaiting Approval caps, mugs and more, here: https://adam-jennings-shop.fourthwall.com/en-gbp This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit growwithadamjennings.substack.com/subscribe
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Nacho Zuccarino - Vulnerability
May 2101:16:35Tap to summarizeNacho Zuccarino - VulnerabilityNacho 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 rooms full of people who know things you don't, and why that discomfort is the fastest way to learn anything. We talk about therapy, about fathers and mothers, about the generation of men who were taught to take the hits and say nothing. We talk about what happens to your identity when the two things you built it around, being a parent and being a professional, are suddenly out of reach at the same time. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, Nacho says something that has stayed with me: becoming an adult is mostly killing your creativity. That is what this conversation is really about.If you’re feeling stuck, or just want to think out loud about where you’re headed, you don’t have to figure it out on your own. I offer free 15-minute conversations for anyone who wants to talk through what’s in front of them. Whether that leads to working together or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve got someone in your corner, even for 15 minutes.Head to http://www.growwithadamjennings.com and book a call.I’d genuinely love to hear from you.Want to support the Awaiting Approval?Remember to rate this episode, and subscribe to the show.And you can get your hands on amazing Awaiting Approval caps, mugs and more, here: https://adam-jennings-shop.fourthwall.com/en-gbp This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit growwithadamjennings.substack.com/subscribe
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Debbie Millman - Becoming
May 1400:48:01Tap to summarizeDebbie 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 about the gap between where she is and where she wants to be. We talk about the strange emptiness that tends to follow creative achievement (as covered in her latest TED talk), about the mechanisms we build in childhood to protect ourselves and then spend decades trying to dismantle, and about what it really means to show up for your work and the people around it with honesty and without pretence. It is a conversation about courage, mostly the kind that arrives late and the kind that is still on its way.If you’re feeling stuck, or just want to think out loud about where you’re headed, you don’t have to figure it out on your own. I offer free 15-minute conversations for anyone who wants to talk through what’s in front of them. Whether that leads to working together or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve got someone in your corner, even for 15 minutes. Head to http://www.growwithadamjennings.com and book a call. I’d genuinely love to hear from you.Want to support the Awaiting Approval?Remember to rate this episode, and subscribe to the show.And you can get your hands on amazing Awaiting Approval caps, mugs and more, here: https://adam-jennings-shop.fourthwall.com/en-gbp This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit growwithadamjennings.substack.com/subscribe
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David Martin - Curiosity
May 700:47:35Tap to summarizeDavid 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 is fundamentally broken, the Thursday morning coffee meetings where a pastor, an ex-NFL player, and a tech founder argue about the nature of existence, and what it means to raise kids in a world where the rules are being rewritten in real time. We also talk about opportunities, the kind that change the direction of a life, and what it really takes to spot someone worth betting on. David doesn’t do inspiration for inspiration’s sake. But there’s a lot in here that’ll stay with you.If you’re feeling stuck, or just want to think out loud about where you’re headed, you don’t have to figure it out on your own. I offer free 15-minute conversations for anyone who wants to talk through what’s in front of them. Whether that leads to working together or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve got someone in your corner, even for 15 minutes. Head to http://www.growwithadamjennings.com and book a call. I’d genuinely love to hear from you.Want to support the Awaiting Approval?Remember to rate this episode, and subscribe to the show.And you can get your hands on amazing Awaiting Approval caps, mugs and more, here: https://adam-jennings-shop.fourthwall.com/en-gbp This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit growwithadamjennings.substack.com/subscribe
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Season 3 Trailer & Cast Reveal
Apr 3000:04:30Tap to summarizeSeason 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 JulyE11 — Recruiter Roundtable Part 2 — 16th July E12 — Awaiting Approval LIVE — 23rd JulyE13 — Lara Juriansz — Boldness — 30th July E14 — Michael Glass — Legacy — 6th August E15 — Emily Court — Authenticity — 13th August E16 — Mark Iddon — Instinct — 20th August E17 — Oriana Gaeta — Belonging — 27th August E18 — Julie Kennedy — Reinvention — 3rd September E19 — Roberto Rotondi — Patience — 10th September E20 — Mikaela Dragon — Vision — 17th September E21 — Katja Alissa Mueller — Identity — 24th September E22 — Guy Vickerstaff — Craft — 1st October E23 — Terri Williams — Trust — 8th October E24 — Jess Campbell — Healing — 15th OctoberE25 — Cast Roundtable — 22nd October E26 — Season Debrief — 29th OctoberTo every single person on this list: thank you. Thank you for trusting me with your story. Thank you for your honesty, your vulnerability, and your willingness to go to places most people don’t go to on a podcast. This season exists because each of you said yes.Just search “Awaiting Approval” on your podcast platform of choice, including YouTube. Follow now so you don’t miss the season premiere next Thursday. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit growwithadamjennings.substack.com/subscribe
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