Trust is built on proof.
People trust according to what they believe is true. Those beliefs are shaped by the proof they accumulate through experience, behavior, relationships, information, and history.
About Icon Element
Built for the trust economy. Made for Los Angeles.
Icon Element was founded to close the gap between what institutions believe they are communicating and what people actually experience, trust, and act on.
We combine cultural intelligence, human behavior, research, measurement, and organizational strategy to help leaders understand how their full institutional footprint is being interpreted—and what that interpretation means for consequential decisions.
Made for This Moment
Trust has moved from sentiment to an operating condition.
Organizations are operating in a trust-deficit environment. Mistrust is no longer an abstract reputational concern; it creates visible consequences for participation, loyalty, implementation, resilience, legitimacy, and performance.
Ignoring that condition exposes the organization to avoidable risk. Measuring it creates a path to stronger decisions and better outcomes.
What many organizations still do not measure
- 01Where is trust strong, fragile, or absent?
- 02Is this initiative building trust—or only adding activity?
- 03How is trust affecting participation, loyalty, friction, and performance?
- 04Which stakeholders remain outside the organization’s field of view?
- 05What should community intelligence change in the decision?
More activity has not created more certainty.
The missing layer is independent trust intelligence connected to institutional action.
Made for Los Angeles
Local complexity changes how every decision is interpreted.
Los Angeles is made up of distinct communities, histories, stakeholder environments, and interpretations of institutional behavior. A decision can be welcomed in one part of the city and resisted in another.
Icon Element was built to read that complexity—and help leadership understand what it means before the consequences reach participation, reputation, operations, or investment.
On-the-ground intelligence
Our Community Advisor Network adds locally rooted perspective to the research—helping Icon Element understand emerging concerns, cultural context, and stakeholder interpretation across Los Angeles.
One city. Many trust environments.
Culture Civic context Yourorganization Institutional history Stakeholder responseOur Philosophy
The principles that govern how we interpret trust.
Foundational Principles of Trust
Proof and truth are not always the same thing.
What someone experiences can become proof for what they believe about an institution, even when that experience does not tell the whole story. Responsible interpretation asks what the proof is, where it came from, and how it relates to the broader reality.
Trust accumulates over time.
A moment can strengthen or damage trust, but trust is built through patterns. Responsible measurement looks at consistency across experiences and over time rather than treating any single interaction as the whole relationship.
Why Organizations Need Icon Element
Trust is already shaping the outcomes leadership is accountable for.
Trust affects whether people participate, stay loyal, advocate, resist, forgive, invest, or disengage. When it is weak or invisible, organizations spend more to produce less, face more friction, and make consequential decisions without a complete picture.
Icon Element helps leadership expose hidden downside, protect investment, and unlock the upside of stronger trust: greater participation, credibility, resilience, legitimacy, and performance that can grow and compound over time.
Protect investment
Reduce friction
Improve performance
Those outcomes are shaped by decisions across
Enterprise strategy
Operational behavior
Pricing and access
Workforce decisions
Procurement
Partnerships
Resource allocation
Public commitments
Leadership follow-through
How We Fit With Your Team
Independent intelligence strengthens the teams already doing the work.
An organization may have an excellent community engagement, external affairs, impact, patient experience, student affairs, or communications team—and still have an institutional trust gap.
Internal teams often hold important relationships, operating context, and implementation authority. Icon Element adds independent intelligence, measurement architecture, candid interpretation, executive translation, and on-the-ground perspective through our Community Advisor Network—allowing those efforts to influence broader institutional decisions.
Internal teams often
- Maintain relationships and local context
- Execute programs, partnerships, and engagement
- Manage budgets, timelines, and deliverables
- Report activity and operational performance
- Hold institution-specific knowledge and relationship history
Icon Element adds
- A broader view of trust conditions
- Independent testing of assumptions and evidence
- Measurement of trust movement and outcomes
- Executive translation and organizational implications
- On-the-ground intelligence through the Community Advisor Network
Meet the Founders
Two ways of seeing the same problem.
Icon Element was founded by Gattison and Jose because neither cultural understanding nor data alone is enough. Institutions need both an accurate understanding of how people interpret behavior and a rigorous system for translating that understanding into decisions.
Institutions need both
An accurate understanding of how people interpret behavior
A rigorous system for translating that understanding into decisions
Gattison
Founder & CEO
Human Behavior and Cultural Strategy
Gattison studies how people interpret institutions, cultural signals, public behavior, and organizational intent. He brings a human-centered understanding of trust, credibility, and social dynamics, along with relationships across Los Angeles civic, cultural, entertainment, business, and community environments.
His role is to identify the patterns, meanings, and questions that conventional performance data often misses—and translate them into executive-level strategic insight.
Jose
Co-Founder & Head of Research
Data, Measurement and Systems Strategy
Jose builds the research architecture, analytical models, measurement frameworks, and operating systems that turn human insight into defensible intelligence.
His role is to ensure that Icon Element’s findings are structured, measurable, repeatable, and connected to decisions, outcomes, and long-term organizational capability.
Gattison
Identifies what the institution may not be seeing.
Jose
Builds the system that allows leadership to measure it and act.
Together, they connect on-the-ground truthto the boardroom.
Background and Experience
Supporting disciplines behind the work.
Gattison
Gattison’s broader background includes cultural strategy, creative direction, experience design, Neurolinguistic Programming study, and cross-sector relationship building. He has also worked with cultural institutions on organizational systems, team development, human connection, and maximizing impact. These disciplines support how Icon Element reads human response, cultural signals, and the meaning people assign to institutional behavior.
Jose
Jose is a McKinsey alumnus with analytical experience across private-sector and government environments. His broader background includes consumer and behavioral analytics, advanced modeling, business intelligence, systems design, and AI-supported workflows. These disciplines support how Icon Element structures evidence, builds measurement systems, and turns insight into repeatable organizational practice.
What Makes Icon Element Different
Independent intelligence designed to reach the decision.
Los Angeles-specific
The work is designed around the actual complexity of Los Angeles. Our on-the-ground intelligence and Community Advisor Network help us read distinct stakeholder environments rather than apply a general national model.
Independent
Our independence creates the conditions for candid response and objective interpretation—giving leadership a clearer view of trust conditions that may be difficult to see from inside the organization.
Initiative-specific and institution-wide
We can examine specific initiatives or the broader organization-wide trust environment, depending on the decisions leadership needs to make.
Outcome-connected
We connect trust to participation, behavior, friction, legitimacy, investment, and performance.
Designed for integration
The work does not end with a report. At deeper levels, it reaches decision pathways, accountability, resource allocation, and operating systems.
The Next Decision
Optimize the trust outcomes of your next consequential initiative.
Know what the activity means, how to unlock the benefits of stronger trust, and which decisions can help that value grow and compound.