🎙 Survive, Thrive & Grow as a Misfit – Turning Differences into Career-Defining Advantages 👩‍💼 Featuring Katya, Chief Product Officer at Holland & Barrett | Host of “Rocking Cribs & Careers”

Welcome to Breaking Down Barriers – where we explore bold leadership, radical authenticity, and the stories behind transformational success. In this episode, we sit down with Katya, a self-described misfit, CPO, mom, and digital trailblazer.

🔑 What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

1. Embracing the Misfit Identity as a Superpower → How being different can become your biggest asset → The reality of balancing a high-powered tech role and motherhood

2. Leading Through Transformation & Innovation → Digital reinvention at Holland & Barrett, a 150-year-old legacy brand → Secrets behind award-winning product design and culture

3. Female Leadership & Inclusion → Getting a seat at the table in male-dominated industries → Developing the next generation of leaders and working with Gen Z

4. Building & Empowering High-Performing Teams → The CPO-CTO dynamic: partners in crime or secret sauce? → Hiring hacks and leadership habits that scale

5. Personal Growth, Authenticity & Legacy → From global moves to life philosophies (yes, even “La La La”) → Advice Katya would give to her younger self—and you

👀 Whether you’re an aspiring leader, a fellow misfit, or someone curious about product culture, this one’s for you.

Rico Surridge, CPTO (ex Which?, BBC, Photobox) Joins Mark to discuss the secrets to making the role of the CPTO A success.

Rico has an insatiable appetite for constant improvement - something he brings with him at every stage in his career, and work life numi Search Ventures is co-founded by Mark Long and Ricci Putnam, where we bring outstanding Leaders together with Founders and Investors.

Sarah Persov, Engineering Manager at Dojo joins us for a brilliant and honest talk that covers

👉 Why women are leaving tech: Micro-aggressions, tokenism, and lack of recognition create an isolating environment. Women often face disproportionate pressure to prove themselves without adequate support.

👉 The systemic challenge: Leadership behaviours, often outdated, are unconsciously passed down. Change starts from the top. Leaders must model inclusive, supportive, and equitable practices.

👉 Equity > Equality: True equity means recognising individual needs and providing the resources to level the playing field. This benefits women and minorities who often face additional barriers.

👉 The hiring gap: Women won’t apply unless they meet 100% of the criteria, while men apply at 30%. This highlights the importance of rethinking job specs and interview processes to focus on potential over perfection.

👉 Why diversity matters: Diverse teams create better products, foster innovation, and reflect the customers they serve. Companies with homogenous cultures are limiting their potential—and their profit.

Andy Skipper is Founder of CTO Craft, and joined Mark on our latest numi Talks to discuss burnout in the engineering community.

Andy highlights the warning signs that often go unchecked, how to process and manage to avoid burnout, and the steps to take to recover from it.

Mark also gets into Andy's role at the phenomenally successful Made.com and found exactly how they managed to keep up with incredible demand.

On this episode, Mark is joined by Chief People Officer Geraldine Butler-Wright where we explore the themes of handling redundancies properly, interviewing - and being interviewed, as well as rising to the C-Suite. Geraldine (G) is Founder of RorCas, a people consultancy that is on a mission to get People right. She has developed her global People leadership career across a range of industries as a Chief People Officer (FinTech, HealthTech, Gaming and MarTech), complemented by advisory work with VCs, startups and scale-ups. Achievements include scaling teams by 1,000 people in a year, securing company awards following significant restructures, leading high-impact organisational transformations, preparing companies for M&A, and serving as a trusted partner in handling sensitive matters for founders, boards, and leadership teams. G is also a podcaster (People & Pioneers), mentor, trustee, and a mum of two children and two dogs.

Andrew Hawklins is Shieldpay's CEO, and has been a key figure in the business, navigating the post-pandemic changes many companies have experienced. Andrew has made the move from CTO to CPTO to CEO, and has a unique insight into the growth challenges of being commercially minded in a thriving business. Mark and Andrew go back many years and have witnessed major shifts in hiring and recruitment strategy over the past decade, and we explore these themes and more on this episode!

Our latest episode of numi Talks sees Mark Long chat with Jacob Sullivan about all things AI in Product and the traits of being a good leader, plus there is loads of great stories from Jacob's time at AWS, Magic AI and most recently; Faculty.

Dave Wascha is a Product Leader, CPO, and when he was a speaker at our last numicon event, he talked about "The Product Reckoning" It caused a bit of a stir, so here we revisit what the product reckoning is. Mark sits down with Dave to explore this, other challenges facing product management and get into other recruitment and growth challenges