Improper is a majority queer, women led creative agency.

With expertise across social and environmental campaigning, design, fundraising, branding, television, consultancy and the arts, Improper is uniquely positioned to approach conventional narratives and reshape them to reflect the world in which we want to live.

We are Improper

leonora@improperagency.com

Leonora Saunders

Founder & Director of Strategy & Operations

nicky@improperagency.com

Nicky Thompson

Founder & Creative Director

kate@improperagency.com

Kate Ford

Founder & Director of People & Strategy

matt@improperagency.com

Matt Moore

Account Strategist

annabel@improperagency.com

Annabel Furness

Designer

Improper Advisory Board

Leng is a passionate Trans DE&I Senior Manager from the UK who actively engages and consults with private and public sector companies. A TEDx speaker, Leng regularly delivers keynote speeches to global organisations, appearing on BBC radio and consulting for companies such as Burberry, ASOS, BDO and Sainsbury’s. Leng also worked on the Workplace Equality Index and the Trans inclusion guides at Stonewall.

Leng Montgomery

With more than 20 years of experience delivering complex changes for large global organisations. Suzy is best known for her leadership of the people agenda. She is Managing Director of The Red Plate, an executive consulting firm, a Non-Executive board member of the Department for Education, a Board Trustee of The Women’s Sport Trust and a member of the Advisory Board at Foundervine.

Suzy Levy

Aisha Shaibu-Lenoir is a prominent LGBTQ+ activist, cultural producer, and founder of Moonlight Experiences – an award-winning organization dedicated to decolonizing travel and amplifying diverse queer culture through nightlife. Aisha’s activism and community contribution extend to the work she does as Head of Community Engagement for UK Black Pride and Trustee for GiveOut.

Aisha Shaibu-Lenoir

Amir Ashour is an internationally recognized human rights defender with more than a decade of experience working with Iraqi and international human rights organizations. He is the founder and chair of the board at IraQueer, Iraq’s first LGBT+ organization. Amir holds a masters degree in human rights from Columbia University, and is currently pursuing a law degree at Harvard Law School.

Amir Ashour

why Improper

A word that has been used historically to shame and denigrate people who do not fit neatly into the systems, structures and standards upheld by the powerful. A label intended to marginalise and to exclude people who look, act and sound different to the majority. Women, people of colour and LGBTQ people have all been deemed “improper” at moments in history and still are today, whether explicitly or implicitly.

To be improper means not acting in accordance with accepted standards. But who decides the standards? Often people are asked to conform to societal norms that were not created by them, for them or with them in mind.

The greatest challenges of our time, whether it’s the refugee crisis or the climate crisis, all fundamentally stem from structural inequality. Society’s answer to inequality is to try to fix the people it marginalises, to make them fit within existing structures. To silence the activist calling for change. But it’s not the people who need fixing, it’s the system that is broken.

Perhaps, then, we need to interrogate standards. Push them a little. Take them apart and rebuild them. If improper means changing the standard, then we think improper is a good thing.

People should be more improper.

Changing the Standard