In this special edition of Sustainable Intelligence to recognize Novata’s 4th anniversary, host Ella Williamson is joined by Rachel Yoo, Founder & CEO of Hiro, and Nadia Haile, Lead Designer & Strategist at Hiro, to reflect on the journey of building Novata’s brand.
From naming and visual identity to brand voice and evolution, we unpack what it really takes to create a sustainability brand that feels credible, human, and built to last. You’ll hear how Novata, a blend of “nova” (new light) and “data”, became the foundation for a brand rooted in purpose and clarity. Plus, they explore how great brands show rather than tell to lead in a crowded marketplace.
Whether you’re a founder, marketer, or sustainability leader, this episode offers an inspiring look at branding with purpose and how it evolves as you grow.
About Sustainable Intelligence
Novata’s Sustainable Intelligence podcast brings honest, forward-thinking conversations about sustainability in the private markets. From carbon accounting to turning data into impact, each episode explores how investors and business leaders are tackling real challenges, meeting rising regulations, and building long-term value. Join us for expert insights, practical strategies, and authentic dialogue that empower action and progress in the evolving sustainability landscape. Listen to more episodes on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Conversation with Rachel Yoo and Nadia Hale (Transcript)
Ella Williamson: Welcome to Sustainable Intelligence, where we discuss all things sustainability for the private markets. I’m Ella Williamson and I’m thrilled to be your host. Today I’m joined by two of the creative minds who’ve helped bring Novata’s brand to life. Since our earliest days in 2021, we’ve been on a real journey to build a brand that’s authentic, relevant, and grounded in purpose.
I am really excited to have two key partners in that journey here today. Rachel Yoo, founder and CEO of Hiro, and Nadia Haile, Hiro’s Lead Designer and Strategist. Rachel brings over 25 years of experience leading global brand work for organizations like NBC Universal, NASDAQ, and Asia Society. She’s helped guide everything from rebrands to immersive storytelling experiences.
Nadia is based in LA, where she also teaches at CalArts and has been instrumental in leading cross-platform design and strategy. Nadia, before we get into the weeds of everything today, I’d really like to start with something foundational. What would you say a brand really is?
Nadia Haile: Great question. Yeah, it’s good to start with the beginning. So people often come to us and they ask, can you make us a logo? And what they’re really seeking or needing is a brand, which is much bigger than any one logo or tagline or website or social media platform. It’s really your identity as you move through the world, interact with your audience, interact with your users and all of those touch points that I mentioned, whether it’s logo on a t-shirt, site header, those all make up parts of your brand and communicate your identity and how you move through the world. So when you’re creating those elements and creating those different brand expressions, what you’re really cultivating is a feeling.
So you want your audience to associate, for example, Novata with a particular feeling every time they go to the site or they use the product or they see a LinkedIn post. You wanna have that kind of consistent feeling and that really builds an emotional relationship between a brand and their audience.
So, for example, what’s so great about being in a sustainability space is that theoretically you already share a lot of values or a common mission with your audience. So they have a similar goal that sustainability is something that they really care about and you can really use that to build your brand relationship, and build that foundation of trust. Use that common shared value and build that relationship with those potential users.
Ella: The part that stuck out to me there was that feeling you want people to feel when they think about your brand and making sure that that’s built for that right audience, be that a sustainability audience or something else. Now, Rachel, if I can move to you here. We obviously know that sustainability is a crowded landscape and generally the world is a crowded landscape. What truly sets the standout brands apart? What are they doing differently that maybe differentiates them from the rest and helps them stand out in the wild?
Rachel Yoo: Sometimes we liken brands to humans in some ways. Ideally the core part of you stays the same. There’s a consistency there, but over time you might evolve and be more dynamic, or you might show up in a different way at a party versus at a business meeting.
And brands are not that different. Now, the challenge of a brand is you need to get 10 or a hundred or thousands of people across the world to be consistent in that, which is why it’s important to articulate it and that sort of thing. So the reason why I say that is because think about the people that stand out?
What do they do well? Why would you wanna be around them? Why do you trust them? Why are you loyal to them? And the attributes of those people are not that different in the brands. Now, this is not about values. There’s so many things that a strong sustainability brand can do, but specifically let’s talk about three that come to mind. It’s about empathy with your audience, authenticity, and consistency. So first that empathy is super critical. So what’s complex and different about the sustainability space is you have a lot of diverse stakeholders depending on what business you’re in. You not only have your clients and customers, but you might have their stakeholders and who they have an obligation to.
So is it regulators, is it federal or is it the entities that they’re reporting to, like LPs, like for example, Novata, or customers, what obligation do you have in transparent reporting to your end customers? Like retail brands might care about someone like me who’s gonna pick up their public report.
And so that’s a lot of layers of stakeholders and the more you understand the complexity of that network and can really empathize with your customer, your direct client user, and the kind of pressures they’re facing, the more you can speak in their words. You wanna mind their language and mirror it back so they feel really seen and heard, and borrow their vocabulary to earn their loyalty.
What’s required and being able to do that is keeping your pulse on the culture as well as the marketplace and the industry. So that’s the pressure they’re facing. So you better know that too, and in particular be sensitive to the emotions that the shifting landscape might be creating. And, really good, strong, sustainable brands consciously and intentionally choose how they’re gonna respond to those emotions, either by calming or lightening the mood or leading and reassuring, whatever the thing is, very much because they understand the emotions and like you said, and like Nadia talked about, the feeling of the audience that you’re trying to reach. So that empathy is super critical.
Let’s talk about authenticity next. Sustainability brands, we think, have a little bit more pressure and attention on your ability to live your values and fulfill your brand promise. So we talk about brand promises, the way you show up in your world and as your brand, what are you implying, even implying or directly saying that you’re gonna do as a brand for whether it’s your direct customer or the end consumer who’s impacted. Those are values in action. You do what you say and then you show the receipts for it. Those are pretty much table stakes for the clients that we work with because we want the ability to ask our clients, hey, if we put this in an ad or on your site, is this what you do? Are you gonna be able to follow through on it?
Lastly, consistency. There is a term called brand police for a reason. We can get a little bit annoying because the people inside a brand who are responsible for the consistency of a brand can experience fatigue. You’re living and breathing this brand day in and day out. And it could be like this again, but the external world might see a LinkedIn post once a month or who knows how often they’re interacting with your brand and you want to keep those visuals and your tone of voice aligned across every single touch point, every single time. The marketplace will not get fatigued by it. In fact, that consistency not only builds trust, but it cements memory. They will remember who you are, they’ll remember your logo, they’ll remember your mark, the symbol and that you’re a teal brand with some bright colors. We want that. That’s exactly what we want, and in fact, it’s important to pace change for that reason. You don’t wanna constantly change your brand because the consumers, you want them to remember and know who you are, just like a human.
Ella: I love that as a human and thinking about it in that way. And I’d like to think that Novata definitely is authentic, but balancing that authenticity with consistency is actually quite a hard balance to hit to make sure that you are meeting people where they are in different audiences, different places, different geographies.
So it’s definitely something that you’ve helped us along the way. So thank you for that.
Rachel: One thing I do think about smart brands, and this is related to empathy, is that you can modulate and customize your voice to the specific audience that you’re speaking to as well the channel, right? So customization is not mutually exclusive with consistency. The consistency piece is holding onto the core parts of your brand and then knowing if that’s the roots of your tree, knowing that the flowers of the branches and the branches can change over time depending on the season.
Ella: Love that. That is brilliant Rachel. You’ve definitely used that before. If we can come back to Novata, before there was a logo, before there was a website, before there were colors involved, there was a name, Novata. Where did it come from and how does it really reflect the mission, the values, and the kind of trust that we set out as a business to build from day one?
Rachel: Okay. Well, naming is so special. I’m sure every parent can relate and feel the pressure of it. So, in 2021, we were honored to be invited into that conversation. And at the time when the founders looped us in, it was before it had any real shape. It was just a bold vision, which was so exciting. And that in the sustainability world is really nice because it’s a purpose-first naming approach, which means that it’s a purpose-driven naming. The name, in a way, can set a north star and a compass for a business to actually grow into, which is really exciting.
So, for Novata, we brainstormed hundreds of names. Once we had this mission articulated of empowering private markets towards sustainable inclusive capitalism, but very specifically with metrics that matter, right?
We knew that it was gonna be about data and data management in the sustainability world. Then the creative sort of told us what it needed to be. And so ultimately the name, Novata, is a portmanteau, which is a combination of two words, and that’s one approach to naming. The two words are “nova” and “data.” Nova is a word that means new light, which we loved. It’s this idea and essence of illumination, shedding new light, new perspective. It’s a sense of hope and innovation, plus data. So Nova and data, you drop the “d” and then you remove the redundancy of “a,” you’ve got Novata. It feels good to say. It’s easy to remember, and again, it has that clarity and the evergreen quality of this is something that Novata will always do. You will always use data and data-related things like data management, data collection to shed new light.
Ella: Mixing that aspirational side with the Nova and then the practical side of the data. I think it’s safe to say that four years on, which it is four years, this month, July 2025, the why has definitely stayed the same. And that’s down to the strong naming. So Nadia. We have the name back in July 2021,
thanks to you and the various partners you worked with. Now it’s time that we had to give it a look. How did the name and the why that you just spoke about Rachel start to shape Novata’s visual identity and how did you translate that into a brand that feels both credible and authentic, like a person, which we spoke about?
Nadia: Yeah, totally. What Rachel touched upon is a great start in terms of really solidifying your mission, knowing what those parts are. And so that Nova/data combination really does lead into the parts that then create the version of Novata today. So that process starts with thinking about your core identity. First of all, making that data management and collection and the whole process, making that easy and simple. So that was a big thing we were keeping in mind as we were like, okay, how is this gonna look? How’s this gonna speak? That’s definitely gonna be a core part of that identity. Collecting quality data and bringing expertise was another element as well as wanting to make sure that the platform itself is really able to leverage all this data to create really good insights and actual next steps. The idea that we’re making this collection easier and we’re giving our audience and users the power to be able to leverage this data and really make change with it. If we’re thinking about Novata as a person, we draw upon a couple personas to craft that experience. For Novata specifically, it is a coach and a sage. So the coach element is speaking to that hope and empowerment bit. It’s really being direct with our audience, being clear, giving clear guidance, and really helping coach them through this process. And being that sort of steady, motivating voice. The sage element brings in that expertise.
So the idea that we’ll take complex things, break it down for you, help you understand what needs to be done when, and step by step guidance, like particularly in the platform. So when you think about those elements, the holistic brand is both the voice and the way we look. Specifically when we think about like the tone of voice, this is what words you say, how do you sound, what is your copy read like? What is the feeling that elicits?
So we wanna make sure that we’re really clear and direct. So this is where a lot of that coach persona comes in. We’re trying to make things super clear and simple. We’re not trying to use super ornate or complicated or flowery language. We really wanna cut to the heart of what it is we do or we offer and give it to our audience clearly.
So, our visual identity, particularly with our photography and graphics, really speaks to a lot of the hopeful and inspiring parts of Novata’s brand. We wanna make sure we’re connecting within the sustainability space.
There’s a lot of inspiring landscapes. There’s always a sense of light or hope in them so we combine that hopeful element with data graphics. You’ll see sometimes a bar graph or some line graphs or dot plots integrating with those, and that really connects again, back to Novata’s mission,
the idea that we’re working with data; it gives an instant visual cue. In terms of specifically, as you mentioned, Ella like connecting to the credible and human side, we wanted to bring in that humanness and warmth for something that can feel very data or technical sometimes. There’s a couple things that help do that.
One is our type face. So Poppins is our primary type face that you’ll see across our touchpoints. And it’s a very rounded sans serif, so this gives it a little bit more of a friendly, approachable feel. And then we have these handwritten annotation graphics, or they’re handwritten inspired. You’ll see these as like a circle or an arrow or an asterisk pointing to specific parts of any design piece. So that’s how we create a little bit more of that human element.
Ella: Wow. So there is a lot that goes into it. Thank you so much, Nadia, for going into that. It’s building on the brand voice, the brand visuals, and then all those extra bells and whistles that make Novata so fabulous and stand out. I remember when I joined Novata back in January 2024, the first thing I looked at was the website and I thought, I love the brand. It’s so clean. They took pride on their LinkedIn. Everything was refined and that made me really excited. And also not being an expert in sustainability, I read the blogs and I understood them and it made me feel like I could also be an expert. So all of that resonated with me.
Talking about that accessibility, since launch four years ago, the brand has clearly evolved. What’s shifted as Novata’s grown and as the landscape’s changed? Rachel, can I ask you that question?
Rachel: Yeah, for sure. We wanted to turn up the volume on that innovation, the technology piece. The way we did that visually is brightened up the palette, added some hot colors, added more graphics that were dynamic in nature. We had the opportunity to use voice and the verbal side through our campaigns to do that and again, the human relatable tone, but making sure that balance is there of we can be playful and clever, but we’re also gonna be experts with authority and credibility. So when we did one of our campaigns and came up with “We’ve got the Tea on CSRD,” we wanted to stay rooted in Novata’s expertise, but also show your personality, cut through the noise. Really, again, stay rooted in why you exist and who you are. But you can change, you can evolve, you can shift, and especially have a lot more fun in campaigns like we talked about, modulating for the channel in the moment, and that was really that worked for that moment in culture at that time. Ultimately you wanna evolve and never drift. You wanna grow with the market, stand on your mission, and always stay rooted in your core values, even when the sustainability landscape is shifting.
Ella: “We’ve got the tea on CSRD” has to be one of my favorite campaigns that we’ve ever run. Nadia, I think you were the brains behind that tagline. But then we ultimately bought it to life on a tea bike around London, tea bags everywhere. It was all around a very difficult and cumbersome regulation, but it brought some fun to it. So thank you for bringing that one to life ’cause I absolutely loved working on that campaign with you.
There’s been a lot of fluctuation in the market at the beginning of this year. We’re just moving into the second half of this year. What do you think makes branding and sustainability unique right now and looking ahead, what should mission-driven brands be doing today if they want to stay credible and relevant over the next five years? A big question. I know.
Nadia: Yeah, totally. A lot of it connects to things that particularly Rachel mentioned when we talk about authenticity in your audience. Thinking long term, a big thing is staying grounded in that strategy and values and evolving. Obviously, there’s channels are changing, tech is changing.
There’s a lot going on, but that really can ground you and, sort of, give you guidance to how you’ll manifest across different touch points going forward. And keeping those values really is what is gonna resonate with your audience. One thing really unique to the sustainability space though is the complexity of the ideas and audiences that you’re working with. We touched upon this a little bit, but particularly for Novata, if you think about the regulation space, there’s so many different stakeholders, so much different complex language to navigate. Even names of regulations, who they apply to and all of that.
And so oftentimes the job for a sustainability brand is to break that down, really make it accessible and make it clear that you definitely understand what is going on, and you’re here to make it easier for your end audience to understand as well. So for an audience in particular, it might be an infographic, a timeline, a guide or a blog post that really breaks it down, uses that clear language and shows that, hey, like we know exactly what you should be watching out for. We know what’s coming up. Here’s how you can prepare or how best you should understand what’s happening in that space. So the complexity for sustainability brands is definitely something that is unique to navigate, but can really show your expertise in that area.
Rachel: And one of those critical words that Nadia said was “show.” We always tell our clients, show don’t tell. Don’t say, we make it easy for you. Just do it. Just make it easy. And then show that. So those examples that Nadia said, that’s exactly what you wanna do as your campaign. That is how you wanna show up to your clients. So we’re big fans of being willing to tease and give away a little bit of the value that you add because that’s how you absolutely gain a foundation of trust. The last things I’ll add to as we look forward, cannot emphasize enough, the empathy, consistency, authenticity. And that’s how you stay recognizable and real.
That combination breeds trust, not only for the long term, but it tends to breed it quickly. The last thing I’ll mention is just a little bit of a watch out for sustainability brands in particular. Sometimes the topics can be quite weighty and so, you know, there’s this term out there, toxic positivity. It is a balance of offering hope and agency. But, never hype. You wanna provide optimism in some cases or that playful lightness, but you wanna stay grounded and demonstrate your authority. Deliver hope without the hype and consistency, authenticity, empathy, that’s always gonna be the winning combo.
Ella: Being grounded is probably in my books, the most important thing. And also showing, not telling, because I think a lot of brands do the telling very well. Very few do the showing very well. And we’re all evolving and especially in a very complicated, sustainable landscape at the moment. So to lighten things up, I would love to finish on a few quick fire questions.
Not that you haven’t covered enough today already. But we’ll start with Rachel for each of them, and then we’ll go to Nadia. Keep them brief. What is your favorite Novata brand color, and what feeling does it spark for you?
Rachel: For me, it’s the OG cyan that was in the original palette because it feels like that light and illumination, but because it comes from, it’s a hot color in the tertiary blue world, so it also feels like trust.
Nadia: I would say for me it’s chartreuse. That was a bit of a controversial addition at first but people have really come to love. I would say it sparks a feeling of surprise and delight for me.
Ella: And for those who don’t know what chartreuse is, it’s like a bright green and yellow color. And it’s all over our website now ’cause we love it. Number two, what’s a brand that’s doing sustainability right at the moment?
Rachel: I am particularly loyal to and specific about what household cleaning products I use. I love Seventh Generation.
Nadia: I am a big fan of Happy Egg. Both their branding and the mission they stand for.
Ella: Favorite design trends you’re loving right now?
Rachel: In product design, dark mode first is really big at the moment. Big fan.
Nadia: I’m a fan of the thinner font weights we’re seeing. Love a sophisticated typeface.
Ella: And to finish on, what’s one design trend you’re ready to say goodbye to?
Rachel: I love AI, but AI-generated fantasy like kittens playing the piano. I do not want to see them in my Instagram feed.
Nadia: I would say for me, it’s a color this sort of dull sage green has really been having a moment and I’m just interested to see what’s going next.
Ella: I agree. Let’s keep the sage voice and the sage feeling, but maybe not the color.
Thank you so much Rachel and Nadia for all your expertise today. It’s been fascinating having you on as always, and I love speaking to you about everything from brand to sustainability to CSRD and having the tea on it.
Rachel: Thank you so much for having us. This was really fun. And we hope that even it helps one listener out there and they learn one thing that it added value.
Nadia: Yeah. Thank you. It’s been great to explore our journey with Novata.
Ella: I certainly have learned a huge amount about our brand and how it’s evolved over the last four years. My key takeaways today are about brands keeping it human no matter what space you’re in.
We are four years on, the why is still the same, so getting that why right at the beginning is so important. Balancing brand visual, brand voice, but also sprinkling on those extra bits that make your brand different, which I’m super proud of what we do here at Novata. And finally, just having fun. So thank you everyone for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and until next time, let’s keep building sustainable intelligence together. Find out more at novata.com.
