Where we started

For 30 years, our team have dedicated themselves to transforming student housing into today’s institutional-grade real estate class. We are the global leader in student living and we believe that our pioneering ethos transforms both the sector and students’ lives around the world.

We understand the power and the role that our brand plays in the success of our business, and the contribution it makes to our reputation, credibility and trustworthiness across our global network of stakeholders, investment partners and student customers. How we tell our story to the world and deliver brand value is a vital ingredient to the future of GSA, its people and overall performance.

In 2021 our business evolved. Nicholas Porter, GSA’s founder, launched his latest business, Yugo, the first global student housing brand and operator, merging the operational brands that previously formed part of GSA and bringing them together as an independent business under one family group.

This approach had been planned for some time and leaves GSA able to focus solely on achieving our objective: to be the global leader in real estate asset management within the student housing sector, creating exciting investment opportunities that make a mark in the world.

Developing our new brand DNA: purpose, values, and visual identity

The development of our new brand is representative of this step change. Working collaboratively, we cemented our purpose, to transform the sector and students’ lives while delivering  strong returns for our investors. This is now embodied by our vision:

To transform student housing through investment that makes a mark in the world.

This vision captures our investment in the higher education space, what our student customers  care about and the overall impact we have on their lives during and beyond their student experience: What we do has a ripple effect on individuals and wider society.

Our values flowed easily from the research we undertook:

• Insightful, our foresight continues to transform the market;
• Integrated, our connected approach delivers sustainable returns; and
• Impactful, our investments make a positive impact on lives and futures.

These values run through everything we do and are ingrained in the culture of our team. 

As global leaders in the sector, we want to have a distinctive voice and position ourselves as a focused, pioneering, global, and socially conscious organisation. It can be easy to lose sight of the bigger picture, but our core belief is that our pioneering ethos transforms the sector and students’ lives. This belief is long-held and drives the passion that our team have for the sector, from those who helped create the sector to more recent joiners. 

Our visual identity has also become bolder and more vibrant. Our logo features more distinctively in our communications and includes what we like to refer to as, “the ripple”, a visual representation of the impact that our investments have on individuals and wider society. And our colour palette has been chosen to set us apart from our peers. 

What will our new brand achieve?

We have dedicated energy and commitment to the development of our new brand. The process has brought together our colleagues and made us think deeply about all of our stakeholders – something we are hugely passionate about. We now have a brand that embodies our company objective, that reflects the company’s evolution and that will underpin the implementation of our growth strategy.

Our brand is our commitment to strengthening our connections with our students, investors, colleagues and the communities in which we operate around the world.