Nerissa Holder Hall

THE BIG GIG: Head of franchise at web-first animation studio Invisible Universe

PREVIOUSLY: Senior director of content strategy for Noggin (Nickelodeon’s learning app)

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Early in her career, Hall taught high school English and worked as a production assistant on film sets in New York. She saw an opportunity to combine these two loves in the world of kids media, and met with Mariana Díaz-Wionczek, head of research on Nick’s Dora the Explorer. Impressed, Diaz-Wionczek hired Hall on the spot as a research coordinator for the show.

FUTURE FOCUS: Hall also has an entrepreneurial bent—she established a social platform for teen girls called CleverHive in 2008 (it closed in 2013), and a direct-to-consumer publishing company called Mirror Mirror Books in 2021. Throughout her career, she has been driven by a curiosity to explore kids’ ever-changing preferences.

“I wanted to see what was new and next—where kids were going to be in the future,” she explains. That’s why Invisible Universe, with its web-first approach to IP incubation, captured her interest. “They are thinking now about what we’ll be doing in the future.”

FEEDBACK LOOP: For today’s kids, abundance of choice makes for a very noisy content landscape. “Part of what every franchise is working for is visibility and discoverability,” says Hall. One of the lasting lessons she learned at Nickelodeon was the importance of knowing specifically what kids like—something Invisible Universe has already built into its development process. “With characters that are born on the internet, we understand what audiences find resonant from the very beginning.”

FINDING THE BLUEPRINT: In her role as head of franchise, Hall is responsible for commercializing and expanding Invisible Universe’s IPs onto new platforms. She is particularly excited about upcoming plans for Qai Qai, a popular brand that was developed in partnership with tennis star Serena Williams.

Based on a doll belonging to Williams’ daughter, the character has built up an online fandom of more than four million followers on Instagram and TikTok. But TikToks can only fit so much. Next up, Hall says Qai Qai audiences can expect to get a more in-depth look at the character in longerformat content, including a series that’s currently in development. —Sadhana Bharanidharan