The Mission One Podcast offers a genuine insider's look at executive hiring and advancement. Hosts Gerard Miles and Dan Hampton bring deep expertise as recruiters and interviewers to delve into the nuances of landing and succeeding in senior roles. From hiring best practices to authentic leadership stories, the podcast focuses on the details and human elements often missing from talent discussions.
If you’re building your leadership team or considering your next move to the C-suite, connect with Gerard Miles or Dan Hampton on LinkedIn, or visit missionone.io/contact-us.
What EA, Atari, and Supercell Taught David Gardner About Executive Leadership
In this episode of Mission One: The Executive Edge, Gerard Miles and Dan Hampton are joined by David Gardner, a General Partner at London Venture Partners, who opens up about the lessons that shaped his four-decade career, from joining EA at just 17 years old to navigating a public company turnaround during the 2008 financial crisis.
Mission One: The Executive Edge is brought to you by Mission One. They ensure founders and senior leaders make the most important hires they’ll ever make across consumer tech, AI, gaming, and entertainment.
If you’re building your leadership team or considering your next move to the C-suite, connect with Gerard Miles or Dan Hampton on LinkedIn, or visit missionone.io/contact-us.
30 Apr 2026
How to Be an Effective Board Member (Build Breakout Companies)
In this episode of Mission One: The Executive Edge, Gerard Miles and Dan Hampton welcome back Nick Button-Brown, Chair of the UK Video Games Council, to unpack what it really takes to serve as a board adviser or non-executive director, especially at early-stage startups.
Mission One: The Executive Edge is brought to you by Mission One. They ensure founders and senior leaders make the most important hires they’ll ever make across consumer tech, AI, gaming, and entertainment.
If you’re building your leadership team or considering your next move to the C-suite, connect with Gerard Miles or Dan Hampton on LinkedIn, or visit missionone.io/contact-us.
16 Apr 2026
Why Most Executives Never Make It to the Boardroom (And How to Break In) | Nick Button-Brown
How do you actually land your first board seat? In this episode of Mission One: The Executive Edge, Gerard Miles and Dan Hampton are joined by Nick Button-Brown, Chair of the UK Video Games Council, to detail the path from executive to board director.
Mission One: The Executive Edge is brought to you by Mission One. They ensure founders and senior leaders make the most important hires they’ll ever make across consumer tech, AI, gaming, and entertainment.
If you’re building your leadership team or considering your next move to the C-suite, connect with Gerard Miles or Dan Hampton on LinkedIn, or visit missionone.io/contact-us.
2 Apr 2026
The AI Divide in Executive Hiring (Most Leaders Are Behind)
AI is changing how executives work, hire, and lead, however, not always in the ways people assume. In this episode of Mission One: The Executive Edge, Gerard Miles and Dan Hampton share what they’re hearing from senior leaders about AI, recruiting, and the future of executive work.
Mission One: The Executive Edge is brought to you by Mission One. They ensure founders and senior leaders make the most important hires they’ll ever make across consumer tech, AI, gaming, and entertainment.
If you’re building your leadership team or considering your next move to the C-suite, connect with Gerard Miles or Dan Hampton on LinkedIn, or visit missionone.io/contact-us.
19 Mar 2026
Negotiating Your Worth: The Executive Playbook for Compensation
Compensation negotiations are some of the most important conversations in executive hiring, and many senior leaders approach them without a clear strategy.
In this episode of Mission One: The Executive Edge, hosts Gerard Miles and Dan Hampton break down the art of compensation negotiation from both the candidate and hiring manager perspectives. They explore how to research your market value, when to disclose salary expectations, and how to structure a counter-offer without damaging the relationship before you even start the job.
From understanding equity and bonus structures to navigating the signals you send during negotiation, this episode offers a practical framework for approaching compensation conversations with clarity and confidence.
Whether you’re a senior leader evaluating your next move or a hiring manager structuring executive offers, this conversation reveals the strategies that help both sides reach alignment faster and avoid costly mistakes.
Mission One: The Executive Edge is brought to you by Mission One. They ensure founders and senior leaders make the most important hires they’ll ever make across consumer tech, AI, gaming, and entertainment.
If you’re building your leadership team or considering your next move to the C-suite, connect with Gerard Miles or Dan Hampton on LinkedIn, or visit missionone.io/contact-us.
5 Mar 2026
How to Hire Top Product Leaders in Gaming
A single product leader can transform a mobile game from a struggling launch into a billion-dollar franchise. But identifying and attracting that level of talent is one of the hardest challenges in gaming.
In this episode of Mission One: The Executive Edge, hosts Gerard Miles and Dan Hampton break down the realities of hiring elite product leaders in mobile gaming. They explore why product has become the most critical leadership role in modern game studios, how to separate true “needle-movers” from executives who simply rode the wave of a successful title, and why the global talent pool is far more distributed than most hiring teams realize.
From mapping global talent hubs to evaluating impact beyond simple growth metrics, this episode offers a practical framework for identifying generational product talent in a highly specialized and fiercely competitive market.
Mission One: The Executive Edge is brought to you by Mission One. They ensure founders and senior leaders make the most important hires they’ll ever make across consumer tech, AI, gaming, and entertainment.
If you’re building your leadership team or considering your next move to the C-suite, connect with Gerard Miles or Dan Hampton on LinkedIn, or visit missionone.io/contact-us.
23 Feb 2026
How to Manage Executive Offers, Referencing, and Onboarding (Part 4)
The final stage of executive hiring is where most companies lose their best candidates. Not because the role is wrong, but because the offer, references, or onboarding were mishandled.
In this episode, Gerard Miles and Dan Hampton break down how to run back-channel references without risk, structure offers that actually excite top-tier talent, and use the notice period as a strategic advantage instead of dead time.
Mission One: The Executive Edge is brought to you by Mission One. They ensure founders and senior leaders make the most important hires they’ll ever make across consumer tech, AI, gaming, and entertainment.
If you’re building your leadership team or considering your next move to the C-suite, connect with Gerard Miles or Dan Hampton on LinkedIn, or visit missionone.io/contact-us.
5 Feb 2026
How to Structure a Successful Executive Interview Process (Part 3)
There’s a notion, today, that good talent is just too hard to find. But what if your hiring process is the problem? In this episode of Mission One: The Executive Edge, hosts Gerard Miles and Dan Hampton dive deep into structuring an interview process that actually works. Together, they unpack how to select the right stakeholders and when to involve them, why timeline matters more than you think and the critical balance between finding the perfect candidate and securing a great one before they slip away.
This episode is a masterclass in strategies to prep interviewers, avoid redundancy and the art of selling your opportunity to world-class talent.
Mission One: The Executive Edge is brought to you by Mission One. They ensure founders and senior leaders make the most important hires they’ll ever make across consumer tech, AI, gaming, and entertainment.
If you’re building your leadership team or considering your next move to the C-suite, connect with Gerard Miles or Dan Hampton on LinkedIn, or visit missionone.io/contact-us.
22 Jan 2026
How to Find and Outreach the Best Executive Talent (Part 2)
Great executive searches are won or lost before the first message is sent. In this episode of Mission One: The Executive Edge, hosts Gerard Miles and Dan Hampton continue their hiring miniseries by unpacking how elite hiring teams approach research, target mapping, and outreach - not as a volume exercise, but as a precision craft.
They explain why sending fewer, more thoughtful messages consistently outperforms mass outreach, and how deep research into companies, roles, and individual career paths allows recruiters and hiring managers to stand out in a noisy market. From building smarter target lists to crafting outreach that feels human, relevant, and credible, this conversation reframes sourcing as a strategic advantage rather than an administrative task.
For leaders frustrated by low response rates or shallow pipelines, this episode offers a clear playbook for finding and engaging the right executives with intention and impact.
Mission One: The Executive Edge is brought to you by Mission One. They ensure founders and senior leaders make the most important hires they’ll ever make across consumer tech, AI, gaming, and entertainment.
If you’re building your leadership team or considering your next move to the C-suite, connect with Gerard Miles or Dan Hampton on LinkedIn, or visit missionone.io/contact-us.
8 Jan 2026
The Executive Hiring Playbook: 7 Lessons That Matter in 2026
Contrary to popular belief, there is no one size fits all blueprint to climbing the C-suite ladder. And, if 2025 taught us anything, it’s that winning the game is about telling a compelling story, understanding what you're actually solving for and learning to spot potential beyond the resume.
In this episode of Mission One: The Executive Edge, hosts Gerard and Dan reflect on their most impactful conversations from the year, joined by Alexis Bonte, CEO of Stillfront Group, and Jonathan Knight, Head of Games at the New York Times.
Tune in for a breakdown of the executive hiring process from both sides of the table - revealing what separates candidates who get the call from those who don't and what distinguishes leaders who scale organizations from those who get stuck.
11 Dec 2025
How to Start a Best-in-Class Executive Search (Part 1)
Every strong hire starts long before outreach, interviews, or offers. In this episode of Mission One: The Executive Edge, hosts Dan Hampton and Gerard Miles open a new mini-series on world-class hiring by showing how to get clear on the specific problem the role must solve, the outcomes you expect in the next 12–24 months, and the kind of leader who can deliver them inside your stage of growth.
They unpack how to align stakeholders, how to prevent the “fantasy candidate” list from taking over, and how to build a scorecard that keeps decisions grounded rather than subjective. They also debate the true value of job descriptions, when they support clarity and when they quietly derail strong searches. For any leader looking to start searches with clarity, confidence, and fewer missteps, this conversation offers a grounded guide to getting the first step right.
27 Nov 2025
How CEOs Make Career Bets: Stillfront’s Alexis Bonte on Risk, Value & Big-Leap Decisions
Senior leaders often talk about strategy, but few speak honestly about the reality of career risk, decision-making under pressure and the discipline of hiring. In this episode of Mission One: The Executive Edge, host Gerard Miles sits down with Alexis Bonte, Group CEO and President at Stillfront, to explore what it takes to build on curiosity, courage, and smart timing.
From the founding days of lastminute.com to building eRepublik Labs and leading a public company with more than 1,200 people, Alexis explains how career growth compounds when you stay close to the value, take bold bets and treat your role like an entrepreneur. He shares practical methods for choosing opportunities, avoiding the “golden cage” of comfort, using instinct in high-stakes hiring and designing leadership roles that stay connected to product, people and impact.
13 Nov 2025
From Sims to Wordle: How Jonathan Knight (NYT Games) Hires for Leadership Potential & Builds Creative Cultures That Win
Leadership at scale demands clarity, consistency, and care. In this episode of Mission One: The Executive Edge, host Gerard Miles sits down with Jonathan Knight, Head of Games at The New York Times, to explore what it takes to lead creative teams, build high-performing cultures, and make thoughtful hiring decisions in fast-moving industries.
From his early years at EA and Zynga to shaping the global success of NYT Games and Wordle, Jonathan shares practical insights on leadership communication, organisational alignment, and future-focused hiring. He explains how repeating a clear vision turns strategy into shared language, why every company needs to reframe “politics” as collaboration, and how to hire for what candidates will do, not just what they’ve done. For executives shaping teams or careers, this conversation offers a grounded guide to strategic leadership, team culture, and authentic growth inside complex organisations.
30 Oct 2025
How to Hire the Top 1% of Executives (Part 3)
Working with headhunters is one of the most misunderstood parts of the executive job search. In this episode of Mission One: The Executive Edge, hosts Dan Hampton and Gerard Miles pull back the curtain on how recruiters actually operate, what retained and contingent searches mean, how to tell them apart, and how to stand out in both.
They share the unspoken rules that make a candidate memorable, from crafting a crisp introduction to building trust through clarity and follow-through. For any leader ready to navigate the hidden world of executive recruiting, this conversation offers a practical, human guide to turning connections into real opportunities.
16 Oct 2025
How to Hire the Top 1% of Executives (Part 2)
Approaching the executive job search takes precision from sharpening your story to activating the networks that actually move opportunities forward. Even the most seasoned leaders lose traction when their narrative is unclear or their outreach is passive.
In this episode of Mission One: The Executive Edge, hosts Dan Hampton and Gerard Miles continue their three-part series with Part 2: Approach to the Job Search. They reveal how to position yourself in the market, craft a standout LinkedIn presence, and build a four-channel networking system that keeps you visible before roles even surface. Whether you’re ready for your next move or simply keeping your options open, this episode is a masterclass in showing up strategically and staying top of mind for the right opportunities.
2 Oct 2025
How to Hire the Top 1% of Executives (Part 1)
Executive job searches aren’t about chance; they’re about prep: building a target-company ecosystem, warming your network, and being clear-eyed about where your skills fit. Even seasoned leaders stumble when they skip the groundwork.
In this episode of Mission One: The Executive Edge, hosts Dan Hampton and Gerard Miles kick off a three-part series with Part 1: Prep for the Job Search. They share practical strategies for mapping the market, testing culture fit, and tackling the hard truth of startup vs. scale transitions. Whether you’re exploring your next move or navigating unexpected change, this is your playbook for a smarter executive search.
18 Sept 2025
How to Move from VP to the C-Suite
Getting to the C-suite isn’t just about snagging a bigger title or a corner office, it’s about shifting from tactics to strategy, leading through layers, and surviving the politics (yes, they exist).
In this debut episode of Mission One: The Executive Edge, hosts Gerard Miles and Dan Hampton unpack what separates great VPs from true executives, why empathy and gravitas matter more than charisma, and the real-life trade-offs, from endless travel to leadership loneliness, that come with the top job.
18 Sept 2025
Preparing for an Executive Interview
Interviewing isn’t just about surviving a few tough questions; it’s about knowing your audience, backing your story with real metrics, and asking the kind of questions that make you memorable. Even seasoned execs get rusty, and hiring managers can trip themselves up with clunky, repetitive processes.
In this episode of Mission One: The Executive Edge, hosts Gerard Miles and Dan Hampton share the secrets of great interviews, from tailoring answers and framing metrics to asking the right questions and running a process that doesn’t scare candidates away. Whether you’re in the hot seat or leading the panel, this is your playbook for interviews that actually work.
16 Sept 2025
Mission One: The Executive Edge - The Inside Track to C-Suite Success
Mission One: The Executive Edge goes deep into how you can hire the best teams and secure the best jobs for yourself. Hosted by Gerard Miles and Dan Hampton, co-founders of the boutique global executive search firm, Mission One, the show reveals the insider view on how senior leadership hiring really works. With decades of combined experience, Gerard & Dan have led on some of the top searches in the world of Entertainment and Consumer. Together, they share candid stories and practical strategies that give you the inside track; your executive edge.
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