It was Leigh George’s longtime fascination with art that transformed her into a storyteller and branding expert. After studying art history throughout high school and college, she had “exhausted my curiosity,” she says, feeling that “fine art was really removed from people’s everyday lives.” Instead of getting disheartened, she thought back to how art was used to communicate with people during the medieval period and the Renaissance. She asked herself, “What has really replaced art in terms of an instrument of power?”
They’re not just clients; they’re friends of mine. I really want to understand what their business is like from their perspective—what keeps them up at night, what has them worried—and do what I can to help them.
The answer was in branding, so she switched her focus to graphic design in graduate school. Then she realized: “I don’t want to be an academic. What I’m really interested in is doing what these designers are doing: helping to tell stories through images and layouts and designs, and thinking strategically about how you can solve business problems this way.” Founded in May 2015 and based out of Washington, D.C.’s WeWork Manhattan Laundry, George refers to Freedom as a branding and marketing “un-agency.” The 47-year-old CEO says, “I’m interested in finding new ways to engage with someone—customers or members or funders. It’s really any sort of organization that’s looking to innovate, that they know something’s not working, that they want to do something different than they’ve done before.”
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