At The Den

Pauline Bertry
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At The Den is a podcast for and by leaders inside professional services: creative agencies, design studios, digital boutiques, consultancies, and innovation teams. In each episode, Pauline and Alexey, both ex-McKinsey, founders of Polar Bear, sit down with a guest for an honest 1:1 to talk about building teams where people want to grow, leadership at different scales, the future of work, and the impact of AI on craft and human interactions. Join us if you're looking for honest, human, and real conversations.

Episodes

  1. Jul 16

    S1E7 Karn Malhotra: Founder personal brand as agency mirror

    Karn Malhotra has spent 20 years building brands for companies. Now he builds them for people, and his argument is simple: in a world flooded with AI-generated content, your human narrative is the only thing that compounds. Karn and Pauline get into the mechanics of personal brand as a system, not a performance: why agency founders who let the work speak for itself are burning energy every time they walk into a room, when a founder brand needs to separate from the company brand, and how to use an LLM as a thinking partner without sounding like one. Karn is the founder of Humanly Brands, a personal branding practice for tech founders and senior individuals navigating what comes next. He spent 17 years running a B2B brand strategy firm in India, then built one of the earlier AI-powered brand consistency tools before it was a category, and has since worked client-side at two talent marketplaces. He thinks about brand the way an engineer thinks about architecture: structure first, flow state later. Why letting the work speak for itself costs you energy every timeBuilding vs. discovering your personal brand: the surfing analogyWhen the founder brand has to separate from the company brandInternal and external consistency as the compounding variableHow to use AI as a thinking partner, not a ghostwriterThe telltale patterns of LLM-generated content (and why platforms bury it)Writing your book in public: closing thoughts for agency founders Follow Karn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karnmalhotra/ -- Polar Bear exists because great teams deserve great people ops. We work with creative agencies and consulting boutiques to build the career paths, cultures, and systems that make talented people want to stay. Our main mission is to protect human connection at work, so we started At The Den to connect with leaders who inspire us and give them a space to share their stories, lessons, and hard-won wisdom on building stronger, happier, more resilient teams. Follow Pauline on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulinebertry/ Explore Polar Bear: https://meet-polar-bear.com All episodes: https://meet-polar-bear.com/podcast

  2. Jul 14

    S1E6 Stefan Moritz: Taking bold moves to grow into

    Stefan Moritz has spent 25 years at the edge of design: helping name service design when it barely existed, building one of Europe's most unusual creative studios in a Swedish forest, running design and employee experience at McKinsey, and now co-founding the Doodle Time Institute to study how humans relate to time. He and Pauline go deep on what made Veride's culture genuinely unreplicable, why agencies that survive the AI transition will be the ones who kept their creative instinct instead of chasing efficiency, and why the right question is not how to balance life and work but how to design several lives at once. Stefan is a service design pioneer, speaker, and co-founder of the Doodle Time Institute, a research and experimentation collective working on time agency: helping people and organizations reclaim intentional control over how they spend their time. He spent a decade at McKinsey Design and before that helped build Veride, the Swedish innovation studio, into a world-class creative agency. Caring rebels: what actually held Veride's culture together for decadesThe building, the lunch bell, and the infrastructure of belongingGrow for growing's sake, or grow into something: the question agencies avoidAI is happening to us again, and companies are reacting the same way they did post-COVIDThe future of design is not visual: why creative agencies are the most important people in the room right nowTime agency, the Doodle Time Institute, and why freed-up time keeps disappearingSeven lives in parallel: a thought experiment on meaning and reinvention Follow Stefan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefanmoritz/ -- Polar Bear exists because great teams deserve great people ops. We work with creative agencies and consulting boutiques to build the career paths, cultures, and systems that make talented people want to stay. Our main mission is to protect human connection at work, so we started At The Den to connect with leaders who inspire us and give them a space to share their stories, lessons, and hard-won wisdom on building stronger, happier, more resilient teams. Follow Pauline on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulinebertry/ Explore Polar Bear: https://meet-polar-bear.com All episodes: https://meet-polar-bear.com/podcast

  3. Jul 9

    S1E5 Denis Frolov: Employer branding as a long-term game

    Denis Frolov has spent 15 years in communications and nearly a decade building employer brands, and his starting point is always the same question: what problem are you actually trying to solve? In this conversation with Pauline, Denis reframes employer branding entirely: not as a function, not as a content calendar, but as a product with users, conversion rates, and a feedback loop. He gets into why small agencies can build a warm candidate pipeline with zero budget, why AI-generated job descriptions are eroding trust faster than they fill roles, and why the companies ignoring junior hiring today are quietly dismantling their own talent pipeline for the next decade. Denis is an employer branding and people communications leader who has worked across management consulting, fintech, and growth-stage companies in multiple countries. He brings a marketer's instinct and a strategist's lens to a field that is often treated as an HR afterthought. Employer branding as a product, not a functionBuilding a warm candidate pipeline with zero budgetThe six most common employer branding mistakesWhy AI content is making it harder to stand out, not easierSegmenting talent by values, not by generationEnabling employees to speak publicly, and why most companies get it wrongThe junior hiring gap and how to grow your future team now Follow Denis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dsfrolov/ -- Polar Bear exists because great teams deserve great people ops. We work with creative agencies and consulting boutiques to build the career paths, cultures, and systems that make talented people want to stay. Our main mission is to protect human connection at work, so we started At The Den to connect with leaders who inspire us and give them a space to share their stories, lessons, and hard-won wisdom on building stronger, happier, more resilient teams. Follow Pauline on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulinebertry/ Explore Polar Bear: https://meet-polar-bear.com All episodes: https://meet-polar-bear.com/podcast

  4. Jul 7

    S1E4 Olesia Skibinska: Growing people in a world without clear paths

    Olesia Skibinska has spent the past six years as a partner at Enrian, a boutique tech and innovation consultancy in Prague, where she leads people growth and learning for a team of 20-plus nationalities. The company's average tenure sits close to six years — almost twice the industry norm — and this conversation is largely about why. Olesia and Pauline explore what responsible freedom actually looks like in practice, what they learned from overengineering our skill framework and ongoing search for a more lightweight approach, and why feedback is both a right and a responsibility, depending on where you sit. Olesia is a Partner at Enrian, a Prague-based consultancy specialising in tech, innovation and digital transformation. She has a background spanning P&G, EY, IBM, and several startups before joining Enrian, where she has been a partner for the past three years. Why career paths are harder to read now, and what that means for growthResponsible freedom: trust as a retention strategyThe skill wheel: what worked, what to scrap, and where Gen AI changes the pictureThe full-stack builder: why the generalist-specialist divide is collapsingFeedback as a right and as a responsibility: where the line sits at different levels of seniorityTeaching people the language of feedback before asking them to use itThank you is also feedback: what companies underuse most Follow Olesia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/olesiaskibinska/ -- Polar Bear exists because great teams deserve great people ops. We work with creative agencies and consulting boutiques to build the career paths, cultures, and systems that make talented people want to stay. Our main mission is to protect human connection at work, so we started At The Den to connect with leaders who inspire us and give them a space to share their stories, lessons, and hard-won wisdom on building stronger, happier, more resilient teams. Follow Pauline on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulinebertry/ Explore Polar Bear: https://meet-polar-bear.com All episodes: https://meet-polar-bear.com/podcast

  5. Jul 2

    S1E3 Pedro Tolipan: Driving innovation from within

    Pedro Tolipan spent 20 years designing digital experiences at some of the best-known agencies and in-house teams in the world, from Razorfish to the BBC to a decade at McKinsey Digital Lab. Now he leads FutureLab, an internal innovation unit inside one of Azerbaijan largest financial holdings, tasked with something harder than any client brief: shifting an entire organization toward human-centered thinking, from the inside. He and Pauline get into what it actually takes to influence without ownership, why AI is 10% a technology problem and 90% a human one, and how you hire and grow a team of talented sponges when the discipline you need barely exists yet in the country. Pedro is the Design and Innovation Lead at FutureLab, where he builds research-driven products and capabilities for a group spanning banking, insurance, e-commerce, real estate and hospitality. Before Baku, he spent 10 years at McKinsey Digital Lab and held senior design roles at Vodafone, Barclays and the BBC. Sprints and marathons at the same time: the internal agency paradoxInfluence without ownership: getting a large organization to moveHiring sponges: why mindset beats skillset in an emerging marketBuilding a research ops platform using agents before there was a playbookAI is 90% a human problem: what that means for leaders right nowThe future of work in Azerbaijan, and why the country is better positioned than it looksKeeping yourself on the track while getting everyone else off it Follow Pedro on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pedro-tolipan/ Polar Bear exists because great teams deserve great people ops. We work with creative agencies and consulting boutiques to build the career paths, cultures, and systems that make talented people want to stay. Our main mission is to protect human connection at work, so we started At The Den to connect with leaders who inspire us and give them a space to share their stories, lessons, and hard-won wisdom on building stronger, happier, more resilient teams. Follow Pauline on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulinebertry/ Explore Polar Bear: https://meet-polar-bear.com All episodes: https://meet-polar-bear.com/podcast

  6. Jun 30

    S1E1 Gareth Healey: Building agency culture to stand out

    Gareth Healey spent 15 years running a 175-person retail marketing agency before exiting in 2017, and has spent the eight years since advising the founders who remind him of his younger self. His thesis is blunt: founders don't scale businesses, systems do. In this conversation, Gareth and Pauline work through the inflection points that trip agencies up as they grow, why a culture of accountability matters more than a Glassdoor score, and why cutting the junior pipeline to save costs might be the most expensive mistake an agency makes right now. Gareth is a consultant, advisor and non-exec director to marketing and creative agencies in the UK. Before that he ran an integrated retail marketing agency from management buyout to 175 people and 12 million in revenue. He wrote "Stand Out or Die" for agency owners, and is currently building an AI practice for agencies alongside his son. What gets you to 15 people won't get you to 30: the systems gapBuilding your first management layer without promoting the wrong peopleCulture at 50 people: why it stops being the founder's jobAccountability as the real marker of a great place to workThe junior pipeline problem: what agencies risk by cutting early talentTraining intentionally in a remote-first, AI-native worldBecoming an AI-enabled business, not just a team of AI tool users Follow Gareth on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garethhealey/ -- Polar Bear exists because great teams deserve great people ops. We work with creative agencies and consulting boutiques to build the career paths, cultures, and systems that make talented people want to stay. Our main mission is to protect human connection at work, so we started At The Den to connect with leaders who inspire us and give them a space to share their stories, lessons, and hard-won wisdom on building stronger, happier, more resilient teams. Follow Pauline on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulinebertry/ Explore Polar Bear: https://meet-polar-bear.com All episodes: https://meet-polar-bear.com/podcast

  7. Jun 30

    S1E2 Todd Zerger: Building culture with intent

    Todd Zerger has spent 30 years leading creative teams and still draws every day. That discipline, he says, is exactly why he has never been afraid of AI. In this conversation, Todd and Pauline get into what actually separates teams that stay creative under pressure from teams that just execute: the difference between designers who can start from a blank page and those who can only work within a system, and why a leader's job is to build a culture where both can thrive. Todd is VP of Design at Strategy CX and has led creative teams at Razorfish and Sapient Nitro across two decades. He draws every day, writes on Medium, and thinks about design the way an anthropologist thinks about culture: as something that emerges from people, not something imposed on them. From paperboy to creative director: how encouragement shapes a careerAI as a creative collaborator, not a replacementWhen specialisation becomes a ceilingBuilding teams from diversity of thoughtStructure, generational expectations, and the blank page problemCulture as something that emerges, not something you prescribeHow adults learn, and why conversation is the mechanism Follow Todd on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddzerger/ Polar Bear exists because great teams deserve great people ops. We work with creative agencies and consulting boutiques to build the career paths, cultures, and systems that make talented people want to stay. Our main mission is to protect human connection at work, so we started At The Den to connect with leaders who inspire us and give them a space to share their stories, lessons, and hard-won wisdom on building stronger, happier, more resilient teams. Follow Pauline on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulinebertry/ Explore Polar Bear: https://meet-polar-bear.com All episodes: https://meet-polar-bear.com/podcast

  • 7 Episodes

About

At The Den is a podcast for and by leaders inside professional services: creative agencies, design studios, digital boutiques, consultancies, and innovation teams. In each episode, Pauline and Alexey, both ex-McKinsey, founders of Polar Bear, sit down with a guest for an honest 1:1 to talk about building teams where people want to grow, leadership at different scales, the future of work, and the impact of AI on craft and human interactions. Join us if you're looking for honest, human, and real conversations.

Information

  • Creator
    Pauline Bertry
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    7
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Pauline Bertry