Babba Rivera Is Bringing Heritage Back to Haircare 

For most of her life, Babba Rivera saw her hair as something to “fix.” As a Chilean immigrant growing up in Sweden, Rivera shied away from her family’s cultural hair rituals, opting instead for flat irons and bleach to fit in with her straight-haired peers. It wasn’t until years later that Rivera realized the Latin American traditions she had once dismissed weren’t just about hair; they were also about history, identity, and self-love. Now, Babba Rivera—a Well+Good 2025 Changemaker—is on a mission to “share the richness of Latin American culture with the world” with her haircare brand Ceremonia, which Rivera fondly calls a “love letter” to her younger self.

The making of Babba Rivera

Unlike so many of the beauty brands that launch today, Ceremonia wasn’t simply born out of a marketing scheme—it was personal. Rivera tells Well+Good she felt “extremely lonely in her brown skin and unruly hair” when she was growing up. Desperate to assimilate, she rejected the beauty rituals her father, a hairdresser in Chile, practiced at home. “He took care of my hair like it was gold,” says Rivera. “He would make his own oil tinctures, give me scalp massages, and buy cheap hair masks from the grocery store and boost them with natural ingredients.” 

At the time, though, Rivera wanted nothing to do with her father’s traditions. “They were coming from my immigrant dad, who I thought was quite embarrassing,” she says, admitting she couldn’t fully appreciate the culture he was trying to nurture within her. “I was too busy being something else.” But as Rivera got older, it became clear that her own beauty routine was working against her. “I spent an hour each day damaging my hair [with heat tools], then spent money on products to smooth out the frizz and add back shine,” she says. “It was like putting makeup on a pimple: You can cover it up for a brief moment, but it doesn’t treat the problem.”

Determined to break the cycle, Rivera started researching holistic haircare, which brought her “full circle to my own culture and the rituals I grew up with,” she says. Around the same time, Rivera moved to New York City, where she encountered more diversity than she’d known in Sweden and met other women with stories similar to hers. “What most of us—brown women in particular—knew as ‘haircare’ was basically just hair damage,” she says. “It was these conversations that inspired me to create a clean hair brand with a wellness focus rooted in Latin culture.”

The birth of Ceremonia

To bring her vision to life, Rivera relied on another aspect of her inheritance: hustle. She describes her childhood as “humble” and her parents as hardworking, and says she started earning her own money at a young age. As a result, she developed a strong work ethic and extraordinary ambition. Both served her well when, at the age of 22, Rivera was tasked with launching Uber in Sweden. “We became the fastest growing launch market for Uber, which put me on an exciting trajectory within the company,” she says. This extraordinary achievement also catapulted Rivera’s career more broadly, landing her on the Forbes “30 Under 30” list at the age of 25. 

When Uber became a bit too corporate for her tastes and a brief stint at the millennial luggage company Away felt likewise constrictive, Rivera realized she was “an entrepreneur at heart” and decided to launch her own brand marketing agency, ByBabba. There, working with industry disruptors like Glossier and Bumble, Rivera saw firsthand how brands could build cultural movements—something she felt was missing in the beauty space for Latinx consumers.

Rivera recognized that while the Latinx community “spent big on beauty,” there was a lack of brands that spoke directly to their unique needs and perspectives. She was ready to take what she had learned—not just as a marketer, but as someone who had spent years repairing her own hair—and bottle it. In her mind, there was no reason Latinx beauty rituals shouldn’t be as globally celebrated as those from France or Korea. But first, Rivera had to convince investors that the world was ready for a Latinx-led haircare brand.

Bridging beauty and culture

Raising capital for Ceremonia wasn’t easy. As Rivera has previously described, many investors had never seen a pitch deck centered on Latin culture and thought that a hair brand would be too niche. But Rivera was undeterred. When she successfully raised a $1 million pre-seed round (an early stage of funding typically used to get a business off the ground), she became one of just 58 Latina founders to ever do so, according to Forbes.

Ceremonia subsequently launched in 2020 with a single product—the Aceite de Moska, a scalp oil inspired by Rivera’s father—and rapidly gained momentum. The brand has since expanded to more than 20 products, including cleansers, conditioners, stylers, masks, and hair accessories, and it also made history as the first Latina-owned haircare brand to be stocked by Sephora.

At its core, Ceremonia embraces what Rivera calls “a skincare approach to haircare.” The formulas leverage natural ingredients that have been used for generations in Latin America, like cupuaçu butter, tamarind fruit extract, and chia seed oil. The goal? To help treat the root causes of hair concerns, rather than just masking them, as Rivera had done with her own hair so many years ago.

But what truly sets Ceremonia apart is how it reframes haircare as a wellness ritual, rather than just another chore. Rivera believes many women feel trapped by their laborious beauty routines—rinse and repeat, literally, but also blow-dry, straighten, curl, smooth, etc.—and she wants to help consumers reimagine haircare as a moment of self-care. “Ceremonia is really about bringing that sense of ceremony into haircare,” says Rivera, “and transforming mindless hair routines into mindful hair rituals.” 

“I want nothing more than for future minority founders to have a success story to point to in the beauty industry.”

Many of Ceremonia’s rituals pay tribute to the traditions Rivera once dismissed—like her father’s scalp massages and at-home hair masks. “Our most popular hair-wellness ritual consists of one-part scalp care, one-part hydration,” she says, acknowledging the nod to her dad. But as much as these rituals honor her past, they’ve also evolved to fit her present. Now a mother of four—including 10-month-old twins—Rivera has come to see haircare as one of the few moments of solitude in her busy life. 

This prompted her to create Ceremonia’s hair-wellness ritual, which starts with a scalp massage using Aceite de Moska, followed by a lather with the Papaya Scalp Scrub, and a deep treatment with the Guava Hair Mask. She finishes with the Leave-In Conditioner before braiding her hair and letting it air dry. “My mom always said, ‘If there’s running water, it’s a spa,’” says Rivera, “and this simple ritual alone brings that sense of spa into my life—which is a true luxury when you are a mom of young children.”

Beyond Ceremonia’s products, Rivera is also deeply committed to uplifting the Latin American community more broadly, prioritizing collaborations with Latinx photographers, models, and artists at every opportunity. This commitment is also woven into the brand’s daily operations, as evidenced by the Latina faces featured on social media alongside Spanish-infused captions. Last year, Rivera also launched a Hispanic Heritage Month campaign that spotlighted Latin photographers across the U.S., inviting them to capture portraits of individuals within their own communities. “We take every opportunity we can to celebrate la cultura through our brand,” she says.

A legacy beyond haircare

From the traditions she’s reimagining to the ideals she’s championing, Rivera is making major strides towards her mission of putting Latin American beauty culture on the map. Since launching Ceremonia, she has also broken barriers in venture capital and retail, earned media recognition and awards, and driven remarkable growth (the brand has averaged 170 percent year-over-year since launch). And yet, Rivera still feels tremendous pressure to keep momentum going. 

“It’s important to me that Ceremonia becomes a big success,” says Rivera, “because I want nothing more than for future minority founders to have a success story to point to in the beauty industry.” Not only would representation have been “extremely helpful” when Rivera was starting her business, but she also knows how much it would have meant to her younger self, who was so desperate to fit in. That’s why she’s particularly proud of Ceremonia’s role in promoting the acceptance and celebration of natural hair—both within the Latinx community and beyond.

“Hair is very emotional, and many of us were taught to believe that the definition of beauty was singular,” Rivera says. “There’s a lot of unlearning to do, and I think Ceremonia is playing an instrumental role in dismantling those limited beliefs.” For Rivera, that mission is just as personal as it is cultural. Ceremonia hasn’t just helped restore her childhood hair—it has also reshaped her relationship with beauty. 

While she can’t turn back time to share this “love letter” with her younger self, Rivera hopes it will reach others who need it, including her own daughters. “For so long, I didn’t see my culture reflected in an aspirational way, and as a result, I wasn’t always proud to be Latina,” she says. “Now, as the mother of four Latina girls, it’s so important to me that they feel proud of their heritage.” And with everything Rivera is accomplishing, chances are they will be—proud not just of their Latin roots, but also of their mother’s role in celebrating them.