Awaiting Approval

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 l...

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 th...

Chris Nguyen has lived more creative lives than most designers ever get close to. He is the Founder of UX Playbook, former Head of Product Design at TrueMonkey, and previously UX Manager at Wizeline, where he helped grow the team from a dozen designers to more than forty. In this episode, Chris joins Adam for a fast, honest conversation about designing a career on your own terms. He shares how he...

Cat How has built one of the most talked-about branding agencies on two continents. She is Co-founder and Executive Creative Director at How&How, D&AD Jury President 2026, and has been recognised among the 100 Women to KNOW in America and 100 Most Influential Creative Leaders in 2025. In this episode, Cat joins Adam for a relaxed, very human conversation about the reality of creative leadership. S...

Awaiting Approval Season 2 will premiere 4th December 2025. Yes, the podcast about the messy, human side of creative leadership is back. With 17 brand new episodes, 16 brand new guests, and one familiar face from season one! This season I talk with design leaders from Microsoft, Ancestry, Elsevier, Lloyds Banking Group, Vodafone, BMW, Rightmove, Shell, British Airways, HSBC and many more.* You can...

Bonus Episode – Season One Exclusive Cast Roundtable Conversation Welcome to this - a roundtable conversation with as many of the cast of Season One as schedules would allow. This is your once in a lifetime chance to sit in on a chat with exceptionally talented creative leaders from a myriad of disciplines including design, advertising, user research, user experience, product design, animation, in...

Bonus Episode – Behind the Mic with Adam Jennings, Creator and Host of Awaiting Approval What does it really take to make a podcast about creative leadership - without a production team, a marketing budget, or a safety net? In this special bonus episode, Adam pulls back the curtain on Awaiting Approval itself. Why it exists. Who it’s for. What it’s becoming. From a quiet idea shared with a partner...

Roger Rohatgi - Chief AI Officer (Former VP Global Head of Design at BP, with past work with brands such as Verizon, Twitter, MTV, Motorola Solutions, Oracle and more) What happens when a motion designer turned creative director becomes one of the world’s leading voices in Human-Centered AI? In this episode, Roger Rohatgi takes us on a remarkable journey from lifeguarding and cleaning gas pumps to...

Jason Giles - VP of Product Design at UserTesting (ex-Ticketmaster, AT&T, Microsoft) From laying carpets by day and playing synths by night to becoming a VP of Product Design at UserTesting, Jason Giles’ journey is anything but conventional. In this episode, we dive into his early struggles with imposter syndrome, how a supportive culture at Microsoft helped him rise, and why he believes some of t...

Dr Chris Arnold – Author, Ethical Marketing Pioneer, Neurodiversity Champion (Former Creative Director and Board Director at Saatchi & Saatchi. Founder of Creative Orchestra and Dyversity Lab) What if your greatest creative strength was the very thing school told you was wrong? In this energetic, honest, and refreshingly unfiltered conversation, Dr Chris Arnold shares how being ADHD and dyslexic b...

Lou Maxon - ECD at Maxon House (Acer, BMW, McDonald's, Lego, Lexus, Sothebys, etc) From crafting editorial layouts at Time Out New York to building immersive brand experiences for global giants, Lou Maxon’s career is rooted in curiosity, craft, and storytelling. In this conversation, Lou shares what it’s like to lead from a forest-bound studio on rails, why authenticity beats scale, and how his wo...

Kevin Parry – Stop-Motion Animator & Video Wizard (Clients include Disney, Laika and more) From hand-drawn frames to viral visual illusions, Kevin Parry has carved a unique path from the stop-motion stages of Laika to the scroll-stopping magic of social media. In this episode, Kevin reflects on learning animation with pencil and paper, creating one-to-two seconds of footage a day on features like...

Jane Cook - Product Experience Design Leader (ex-Uswitch, Global Media, Visa Europe, Vodafone, Dell Technologies, Hasbro, Mattel) From designing Barbie dolls in Milan to leading design teams across fintech, healthtech, and global consumer brands, Jane Cook brings heart, grit, and clarity to every stage of her creative leadership journey. In this episode, Jane shares how an early career in industri...

Bill Snebold – Creative Director & Entertainment Industry Specialist (Former design leader at Paramount Pictures and Disney; clients include Disney, The CW Network, and PBS) From specifying typographic details for actor resumés in a Hollywood attic to designing marketing materials for Titanic and Mission: Impossible , Bill Snebold has been at the forefront of media innovation. In this episode, Bil...

Rashmi Lopez - Creative Director & Founder (ex-CareRev, Genius Sports, MediaTemple, IGN) From gaming and beauty to healthcare and tech, Rashmi Lopez has led design across some of the most unexpected corners of the creative industry. Her journey? Anything but linear. In this episode, Rashmi opens up about surviving multiple layoffs, chasing community over titles, and why every sketchbook should be...

Dave Zaboski - Artist & Former Animator at Disney, Warner Bros. and Sony ( Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Pocahontas, Fantasia 2000 ) From animating some of the most iconic films of all time to painting for the Dalai Lama and co-founding a tech startup, Dave Zaboski has spent a lifetime turning thoughts into things - and teaching others to do the same. In this episode, Dave reflects...

Laura Baker - Managing Director at Fearless (Founding member of FIFTY, ex-industrial designer) From Post-It notes in the dark to leading one of the most respected design consultancies in the UK, Laura Baker’s path into leadership was anything but planned. In this episode, Laura shares how an unexpected client decision thrust her into leadership, how a gut-punch moment around burnout reshaped how s...

Stan Reimgen - Co-Founder at Big (ex-Commerzbank, Zalando, Microsoft, Tomorrow Bank) From launching mobile banking for 1.5 million customers at Commerzbank to building sustainable innovation with pioneers like Zalando, Microsoft, and Tomorrow Bank, Stan Reimgen’s journey is a masterclass in purpose-driven design leadership. In this conversation, we explore his shift from business school to hands-o...

S1. E2. : Charmaine Wyland – User Focused Design Leader, (Ex-Gumtree, Just Eat, Expedia, SapientRazorfish) From e-learning in Dublin to redesigning legacy media platforms and leading massive digital transformations for big brands in both the USA and UK, Charmaine Wyland’s creative leadership journey is anything but linear - and all the better for it. In this episode, Charmaine reflects on her serp...

S1 E1 : Kevin Frank - Creative Leader (ex-Apple, LinkedIn) and Author of Raising Creative Teams Kevin Frank has spent three decades leading creative at some of the world’s most iconic brands, from launching global campaigns at Apple to redefining brand and culture at LinkedIn. Along the way, he’s earned recognition from Cannes, D&AD, and AdAge’s In-House Agency of the Year and Best Places to Work...

For the last 30 years, I’ve led creative teams across every discipline. One thing’s always been true - the most interesting conversations happen with creative people. So I started recording them. Awaiting Approval is a podcast about the messy, human side of creative leadership. And Season One is packed with the kinds of guests I wish I’d had access to when I was starting out. From Apple, Microsoft...

This is a new podcast where I sit down with seasoned leaders from across the creative industries to talk honestly about the work, the lessons, and the leadership moments that shaped them. The episodes are real, unfiltered, and always end with the same simple question. How each guest interprets that question? That’s up to them! And you’ll need to subscribe to find out what the question is. This tra...