Still Loading: A podcast all about Leadership for the Digital Age

In this podcast episode, Ilona Brannen interviews Lesley Vossenkemper, founder of Scale Up Strategies. Leslie shares her background in the education sector and her passion for helping businesses grow and achieve their goals. She explains how she transitioned from working in a corporate environment to becoming an entrepreneur. Leslie discusses the importance of being a spark of change and shares he...

In this episode of the Still Loading podcast, host Ilona Brannen interviews Febronia Ruocco, a marketing expert with extensive experience in the FMCG sector. Febronia shares her insights on cultural intelligence and the importance of understanding local perspectives when working on global marketing projects. She discusses her early career at Cadbury Schweppes European Beverages, where she collabor...

In this episode, we dive into the world of remote leadership and the challenges faced by leaders in the digital age. Our guest, Peter Benei, founder of Anywhere Consulting, shares his expertise in leadership development for remote leaders and provides valuable insights for startups and growing companies. Peter highlights the common operational mistakes made by founders, stemming from their backgro...

Heather Hansen is a global communication consultant who helps companies navigate the challenges of communication in multicultural and multilingual settings. She emphasises the importance of conscious communication, confident communication, and connected communication in her approach. The "unmuted" framework she developed from her award winning book, focuses on self-awareness, skill building, and c...

In this episode of the Still Loading Podcast, host Ilona Brannen interviews Owen Dearn, a recruitment consultant specialist in the tech sector. They discuss the unique aspects of recruiting in the tech industry, the impact of remote work, and the changing employee benefits landscape. Owen shares insights on how companies are adapting to hybrid work models, and highlights the importance of intentio...

In this episode I’m chatting to Dr Pradeep Sacitharan who has had an extraordinary life. He went from a war refugee, teenage gangster, and a high school dropout to award winning scientist at Oxford and Harvard in 7 years. The he went on to discover drugs as a professor and become Vice President of a Biotech with a revenue of 1.6 billion USD. Not stopping there, Pradeep challenged the system, quit...

I'm excited to bring you a conversation with Kevin Ignatius, an L&D expert at Omnipresent, a digital company that focuses on global employment operations. Omnipresent is not only adapting to the digital age, but shaping it with their innovative approach. With Ominpresent being a remote-first culture, Kevin and I had the opportunity to design a leadership development program that truly reflects the...

Join me as I wrap up and reflect on season 4 of the Still Loading podcast! In this episode, I’m sharing my thoughts on the future of leadership in the digital age based on the observations and learnings from throughout this season. We’ve had a diverse range of guests on the show who’ve offered some fantastic thought-provoking conversations. From insights on scale-ups and startups to challenges and...

Ben Norton shares his unique journey in the ever evolving tech industry. Offering insights on the cultural differences between agencies and larger corporations, the challenges of remote work and maintaining employee engagement and cohesion, and how difficult it can be to have an authentic leadership style and be a visionary for the company. Ben Norton is a seasoned professional with over 25 years...

Have you given up on the idea of setting goals for the new year? Before you do, let’s see if we can help set you up for success! In this episode, I’m sharing my top tips and helpful exercises to help you finally achieve your goals - or at least get you a lot closer to them! (Which is a win that many people forget to give themselves credit for). Ready for a new perspective? Hit play! (00:48) Ilona’...

Working remotely isn’t always as luxurious as it seems. Many people in remote positions struggle to stay motivated in their work and greatly miss human connection. So what can we do from a leadership perspective to alleviate the emotional pitfalls that remote teams often experience? Thankfully, Melissa Romo, wrote a book to show us the way. Melissa Romo is a veteran of global business management,...

The side hustle economy is on the rise! With more and more people developing an interest to launch there own thing, it’s predicted that by 2030 there will be more side hustlers than full-time employees. But even with this rapidly growing trend, most side hustlers are afraid to inform their day-time leadership, fearing that it’ll be perceived as a distraction from their day job. But Mary Agbesanwa,...

How do you successfully manage and lead a team remotely? This is a question that comes up a lot. When it comes to remote vs. in-person, the basic principles of good leadership remain the same. The only difference is the method in which we are interacting with others and our surrounding environment, however, it does require a different skillset to be able to develop those crucial soft skills and de...

Poor leadership could mean the difference between a thriving business and one that’s struggling to survive. So what does it mean to be an effective, and respected, leader in your organization? It means connecting with your team on a human level and giving them the support they need to succeed. Sean Georges, J.D., LL.M. and John Buford, Ph. D. are the co-founders of On Mission Leadership . With ove...

In this episode, we’re reflecting on the stories, expertise, and the wisdom of our guests so far. Tune in to hear my take on developing sales skills, building relationships as part of your marketing strategy, and the importance of focusing on your customer’s journey after they buy your product. Let us know what part of these conversations resonated with you the most! Email us at hello.stillloading...

You don’t have a business without your customers - but are you focusing on customer success? To build momentum and survive in the market, start-ups have to evolve rapidly, and oftentimes that means that there’s a tendency to solve problems from the top down instead of from the bottom up. It’s easy to think that hiring a more senior role with a specific set of skills is the right solution for custo...

Building relationships is a fundamental key to growth in your business. Whether it’s relationships with your customers, partners, or employees it’s crucial to establish and maintain that trust and comfortability with your brand from the inside out. Lucy Woolfenden has 20 years' experience of launching brands and developing them across multiple markets. Lucy is the Founder of The Scale Up Collectiv...

Welcome to Season 4 of the Still Loading Podcast! We've got some amazing guests lined up for this season and we’re kicking things off with Monika Holland. Monika is the strategic advisor and founder of BOLD Business Decisions and a go-to-market specialist for early stage startups. She helps talented technical founders develop sales skills to successfully bring their product to market. We discuss h...

Season three has reached its finale and to celebrate, I invited my editor Victoria Spooner to reminisce about some of our favourite moments from the season. In this episode, we listen back to some highlights from the season, revisit some of the lessons we learned, and share some of our own reflections - from servant leadership, being an inclusive leader and personal branding I share my learnings a...

Personal branding is one of the keys to success in the digital age and can be and confusing road to navigate. Thankfully, we have knowledgeable experts like this weeks’s guest, Ioana Jago to help us figure it out. Ioana is a Personal Branding and Growth Strategist and founder of IVENTUM UK, a growth marketing agency. Ioana breaks down the importance of creating a personal brand, how to slowly and...

Eve Horne is a singer, songwriter, and producer and can boast the most played Christmas song in Denmark as one of her own. Getting her start as a performer in the girl band JUICE, Eve has more recently focused her efforts on songwriting, producing and teaching others how to build these skills. In 2020, Galvanised by the knowledge that only 4% of music producers are women or non-binary, Eve set up...

My guest on this episode Jodi Hausen. Jodi is an award winning journalist and currently resides in Bozeman, Montana. Diagnosed with ADHD later in life, Jodi has made it her mission to advocate for the neurodivergent community and other differently-abled people through telling their stories and her own. This was such an illuminating conversation about everything from the benefits of making workspac...

This week on Still Loading is Brooklyn-based filmmaker, writer, director, producer, and mens health advocate William Wonders III. His current project, Othello Rising is about systemic racism in US healthcare and its effects on the wellbeing and life expectancy of black men. In this episode we talked about William’s own health journey, his role as a leader in his community, and the importance of ta...

We’re already at episode five and my guest for this one is Shane Wallace. Shane is the CEO of Culturesmith, an organisation that educates leaders and teams about emotional sustainability and how to cultivate it. They believe that if organisations became intentional about sending the best possible version of their employees home each evening, many of the problems that affect us outside of work woul...

Marie Kirwan and Kristen Rossi are community leaders for those MBA people who are not your usual MBA people. Coming to their field from non-traditional backgrounds, Marie and Kristen noticed the lack of community for people like them so they teamed up to create one. In this podcast, we explore their journey and talk about non-linear career paths, the prevalence of imposter syndrome, and how we are...