Hidden Gems: Meet Jadon of POSSE

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jadon.

Hi Jadon, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’ve always known I wanted to work within fashion and entertainment. I went to fashion school where I studied marketing and business, and after graduating in 2016, I started my career in the industry as a fashion publicist.

My first experience in PR was very The Devil Wears Prada. It was that early-2000s idea of the fashion industry where working for a difficult boss, being constantly stressed, and sacrificing your entire life for a job not paying decent wages was treated like a rite of passage. I was miserable, but in retrospect, it taught me a lot and ultimately pushed me to start POSSE. I learned the fundamentals of PR, started building relationships with influencers, celebrities, stylists and editors, and, maybe most importantly, learned the kind of environment I didn’t want to create one day.

In 2018, I co-founded POSSE with one of my oldest friends, Marley Hemmen. Marley and I met when we were 14 years old in high school, so our story together goes back long before POSSE ever existed. We grew up together, and it’s pretty surreal now to look at what we’ve built from something that started as an idea between two longtime friends. From the beginning, we wanted POSSE to be different. We were interested in the relationship between brands, talent and culture, and how you could create genuine moments through IRL experiences.

A huge turning point was creating The POSSE House in West Hollywood. Having a physical home completely changed the way we could bring brands, talent, editors, stylists and our community together. Over the years, it’s become a showroom, event space, creative playground, and the heartbeat of POSSE.

Since then, we’ve taken what we built in LA and expanded it into experiences around Coachella, Miami Swim Week, New York Fashion Week, awards season, Pride, and so many other cultural moments. We’ve worked with brands at completely different stages, from emerging names and designers we’ve helped introduce to the industry to major global companies like Harley-Davidson and CashApp.

What I’m most proud of is that we’ve grown without losing the instinct we started with. POSSE is still incredibly relationship-driven and hands-on. Marley and I are constantly asking ourselves what feels fresh, what people are actually going to care about, and how we can approach something differently.

It’s been eight years of constantly evolving, taking risks, learning as we go, and saying yes to ideas that sometimes sounded crazy at first. There was never one big break that got us here. It was a lot of small moments, relationships and ideas that compounded into something much bigger than we could have imagined.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Definitely not. There have been a lot of highs and a lot of lows along the way. I think when you’re building something from the ground up, especially independently, you have to get comfortable with a certain level of uncertainty. There have been moments where everything felt like it was clicking, and others where we were questioning what we were doing or how we were going to get through the next hurdle.

One of the biggest challenges has been growing POSSE completely on our own. We’ve never had a safety net or outside backing, so at the end of the day, everything falls on our shoulders. You’re responsible for keeping the business moving while also thinking about how to scale it, managing a team, keeping brand partners happy, bringing in new business, and still finding the time and energy to be creative. There’s a very different weight to every decision when it’s your own company and you know you’re ultimately responsible for the outcome.

We’ve also learned that growth is rarely linear. You can have your biggest month ever followed by one that humbles you very quickly. Opportunities fall through, partners come and go, ideas don’t always work, and sometimes you have to pivot faster than you’d like. I think the biggest lesson has been not allowing any one high or low to define where we’re headed.

There have absolutely been moments over the last eight years where it would have been easier to walk away, but we’ve always believed in what we’re building. Looking back, a lot of the periods that felt the hardest at the time ended up forcing us to evolve in ways that ultimately made POSSE stronger.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about POSSE?
POSSE is a LA-based creative entertainment company that sits at the intersection of brands, talent, media and culture. At our core, we specialize in building brands through PR, talent relations, strategic seeding, VIP dressing, events, brand partnerships and experiences.

I think what sets us apart is that we’ve never approached PR as simply getting a product into someone’s hands or securing a press placement. We’re much more interested in building the right relationships around a brand and creating moments that people genuinely want to be a part of. Whether that’s getting a brand onto the right talent at the right moment, introducing an emerging designer to an editor, producing an experience around a major cultural moment, or creating an unexpected partnership, there always has to be a reason behind it.

The POSSE House has become a huge extension of that philosophy. It’s our West Hollywood showroom and event space, but it’s also become so much more than that. On any given day, we might have a celebrity stylist pulling for a client, talent coming in for a fitting, an editor stopping by to see a collection, or our team completely transforming the property for an event. Having our own space allows us to create a world around the brands we work with rather than waiting for opportunities to come to us.

We’re probably best known for our talent relationships and event experiences. We’ve built a really strong community around POSSE over the years, and I think people trust us because those relationships have been built organically. The same goes for the brands we work with. We become very involved in their world and look at the bigger picture of how they should be showing up culturally, not just what we can get out of the next campaign or event.

Brand-wise, I’m most proud that POSSE has developed a point of view of its own. We’ve been able to work across fashion, beauty, wellness, food and beverage, entertainment and lifestyle without losing our identity in the process.

Ultimately, I want people to know that we’re very hands-on and intentional about what we do. We’re not interested in doing something just because it’s how the industry has always done it. We want to create the moment people are talking about, build relationships that last, and find ways for the brands we work with to become part of culture in a way that feels natural.

Can you share something surprising about yourself?
I think people who know me through POSSE probably assume I’m extremely social because so much of my work revolves around events, talent and constantly being around people, but I’m actually a homebody. I can be at an event with hundreds of people one night and be completely content spending the next night at home with my boyfriend and cats.

I’m also obsessed with history, especially Hollywood and Los Angeles history. The POSSE House was built in 1917, and I love that we’re creating all of these new moments in a place that has already lived so many lives before us. I’m constantly collecting books, researching buildings and going down random rabbit holes about what LA used to look like and the people who lived here. I think that interest in the past probably influences my creative perspective more than people would expect.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.posse.la
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/posse.la