Founder Files
Haircare· New York, USA · Updated 14 May 2026

Babba Rivera

A Swedish-Chilean marketing executive — early Uber Sweden launcher, ex-AWAY brand director, founder of agency ByBabba — who launched Ceremonia in 2021 to fill an obvious gap: a clean, premium haircare brand built around Latinx hair traditions and ingredients.

"Latinx beauty is a culture, not a niche."

Babba Rivera
Background

Babba Rivera grew up in Sweden as the daughter of a Chilean hairstylist father and built her early career in marketing — launching Uber in Sweden, leading partnerships at Uber New York, and serving as director of brand at AWAY before founding ByBabba, a brand-marketing agency working with DTC companies.

She launched Ceremonia in 2021 to address a market gap she'd lived: clean, premium haircare brands almost universally formulated for and around white European hair. Ceremonia was built around Latinx hair-care traditions (aceite de moska, papaya, guava) and came out of the gate with sophisticated, minimal branding designed to sit on a Sephora shelf next to legacy prestige.

The brand has raised institutional venture capital (Wellington Access Ventures, True Beauty Ventures, others) and scaled into Sephora US and broader retail while remaining founder-led.

Philosophy

Cultural specificity as differentiation — not a positioning angle, the actual product brief.

Premium clean for textured / Latinx hair, on the same shelf as the legacy prestige set.

Career timeline
  • Pre-2015
    Launches Uber in Sweden; partnerships at Uber NY
  • 2010s
    Director of brand at AWAY
  • Late 2010s
    Founds ByBabba marketing agency
  • 2021
    Launches Ceremonia
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