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 that's harder to find in most design conversations.We start with presence - and the quiet way our relationship with technology erodes our instincts, our communities, and our capacity for genuine connection. Sandra offers a grounded perspective on what it means to truly feel seen, why humans are wired for belonging, and how easily we mistake online networks for real support.

From there, the conversation opens up. Sandra shares her evolution from trauma-informed design into regenerative experiences - including an event she hosted that used movement, music, and embodied practice to connect participants with the sun, soil, animals, and future generations before moving on to the design activities. What shifted in that room is worth hearing.We also talk about leadership and its responsibilities: tokenisation, knowing when you're not the right voice, and offering compassion to your past self instead of critique. There's a thread here about becoming the kind of ancestor you'd be proud to be - and what that demands of design leaders right now.

Sandra closes with what she considers her most significant work, the one she is most proud of: the Responsible Design for Change Fellowship, built to train the next generation of design leaders in practices that scale impact through the people they'll go on to lead. She makes a compelling case that designers can no longer afford to be naive about the economy they work within - and that alternatives like doughnut economics, circular systems, and designing within planetary limits aren't fringe ideas. They're where the important work is heading.

This is a calm, expansive episode. It’s practical in places, philosophical in others, and deeply human throughout.

In this episode, we cover:•

Moving from engineering into UX by building your own path

• Why presence and community matter more than we realise

• The difference between trauma-informed and regenerative spaces

• Hosting embodied, earth-centred design experiences•

The danger of mistaking online connection for real support

• Tokenisation and knowing when to step back

• Compassion for your past self• Designing within planetary limits

• Doughnut economics and alternative economic models

• Building the Responsible Design for Change Fellowship

• What it means to become a responsible ancestor

#AwaitingApproval #CreativeLeadership #DesignLeadership #LeadershipPodcast #light

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This is Awaiting Approval. A podcast about the messy, human side of creative leadership.

Hosted by Adam Jennings - a creative leader with three decades of experience leading teams and projects for global brands including Microsoft, Salesforce, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Ancestry, Dolby, BBC and many more - this show features honest, unscripted conversations with the leaders shaping design, storytelling, and innovation today.

These are the conversations you don’t hear in keynotes. The ones about imposter syndrome, trust, failure, confidence, and finding your voice as a leader.

Whether you’re just stepping into creative leadership or you’ve been at it for years, Awaiting Approval is your place to feel seen, challenged, and encouraged.Awaiting Approval is a Cordial Fox production.

Hosted by Adam Jennings.

Produced by Adam Jennings & Jasmin Egner.

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