In some personal news, late last year I was endorsed by Tech Nation and awarded a UK Global Talent visa.

It’s the UK’s visa for people in fields like tech, research and the arts, and nobody has to sponsor you. If you know the US system, it’s the nearest thing to an O-1.

I’d been living in London for the best part of three years on a Youth Mobility visa, which comes with an end date, and I wanted to stay. As I see it, London is where design and AI meet. The city has some of the best design talent in the world and some of the most serious AI work, and I don’t know anywhere else that puts the two this close together. That overlap is exactly where I want to be working.

Day to day, nothing looks different. I still run Never Before Seen and lead product at Hill. What changed is the fine print. Most visas tie you to one employer, and my work has never been that shape. For over ten years I’ve run a studio alongside other roles, started companies, and joined early-stage teams for a few weeks or a few years at a time. That doesn’t fit on a sponsorship form.

Now it doesn’t have to. And staying here for good no longer depends on who employs me.

The application made me explain a decade of scattered work as one argument, which was more useful than I expected. But the part that mattered most came from other people. Thank you to the past colleagues who wrote letters and offered to act as references. You were far kinder about my work than you needed to be, and I won’t forget it.

I know I’m lucky it worked out, and I’m incredibly grateful for the chance to keep doing this work here.