Baba Rivera spent the early part of her career working for startups.

She helped launch Uber in her native Sweden, then she worked at Away in New York City,

all before launching her own marketing agency.

Once Baba realized she wanted to be in charge of something from concept to execution,

she got to work figuring out what it was she wanted to be in charge of and where there was a need.

That process led her to launch Ceremony, a clean hair care brand for Latinas.

We talk about beauty as a form of self-care,

the unique experience of being a Chilean,

raised in Sweden and immigrating to the United States,

and the importance of focus grouping every product. Bubba, my girls love you. So thank you so much for doing this.

Oh, I'm so excited. Thanks for having me.

Your mom is a beauty queen. Your dad, a hairdresser. What were the lessons you were receiving

about beauty growing up? So many. I think most importantly, though, I feel like I grew up with a very

healthy approach to beauty. In my household, we practice beauty as a form of self-care and a form of self-love.

My dad was a hairdresser back in Chile, but I grew up in Sweden.

So when he immigrated there, due to the language barrier, he was never able to get a job in the field.

But that didn't prevent him from, you know, spending a lot of time practicing his passion for hair on me.

And I have so many fond memories of receiving scalp massages from him and like hour long sessions of breeding my entire hair.

And my mom, she had this interesting approach to beauty where we didn't have a lot of money growing up.

So we would buy, you know, whatever hair mask or shampoo conditioners and stuff at the grocery store.

But my mom would then boost them with oils from our kitchen.

Now looking back, it really set the foundation for this relationship that I have to beauty today, which is about nurturing myself and doing it as a form of self-love versus self-hate.

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