Life & Work with Priscilla Oropeza of Los Angeles

Today we’d like to introduce you to Priscilla Oropeza.

Priscilla, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I always say that my career really began as a feeling before it became a reality.

As a pre-teen I was wildly obsessed with fashion magazines, specifically Teen Vogue. The internet was my best friend and I was a devout fan of sites like Into The Gloss, Shop Intuition, and of course Vogue. Fast-forward to college, I began interning at a PR firm in West Hollywood and everything really skyrocketed from there! I spent years inside the fashion, beauty, and creative industries watching how stories were told and paying special attention to who exactly got to tell them. I was always drawn to the brands that felt lived in, intimate, and emotionally honest rather than anything loud or overproduced. I was working across campaigns, social, and creative direction, but I kept noticing that the most powerful brands were those not built by chasing trends, but the ones that were built by cultivating atmosphere, memory, and an original point of view.

After interning at a few agencies, I officially entered the workforce lending my talents to different start-ups and agencies. Outside of my nine to five, I always freelanced and consulted on the side. After experiencing corporate burn out, I knew that my success and the happiness I found in freelancing had to eventually lead to my own agency. Poema was created to do exactly that.

At first, it was just me quietly helping brands find their voice and visual language through consults and collaborations. I worked behind the scenes shaping brand narratives, launching projects, producing shoots, and building worlds that felt cohesive and intentional for each client. Within just a year, those projects grew into something much larger. Fashion houses, fragrance studios, restaurants, and independent creatives began coming to me not for consults or quick shoots, but for meaning. They wanted their brands to feel like something people could step into under my direction.

Today Poema is a full service creative studio and cultural consultancy based in Los Angeles. We produce campaigns, social ecosystems, events, print, and experiential worlds that allow brands to exist beyond screens. Everything we do is rooted in storytelling, restraint, and emotional resonance.

The path here was not linear. It came from years of building, losing, rebuilding, and trusting my creative instincts even when it felt incredibly risky. Poema is the result of choosing to create something slower, more intentional, and more human in an industry that often rewards the opposite.

It is definitely still growing, but it is growing with purpose.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It has definitely not been a smooth road, and I think that is a big part of why Poema exists the way it does.

I am a single mother and a creative working inside industries that are still very exclusive, and often quietly unwelcoming. There were many moments early on where I was walking into rooms where I was the only person who looked like me, spoke like me, or came from where I come from. I learned quickly how much harder you have to work just to be taken seriously, even when your ideas are strong.

There were also very real, practical struggles. I remember driving from Bell Gardens to West Hollywood with my gas already light on, praying I would make it to a meeting, knowing that one opportunity could change the trajectory of my career prospects. I was a senior in college juggling motherhood, an internship, freelance work, client calls, and creative vision all at once. There were no safety nets. If I did not show up, things did not move forward.

I also faced the emotional side of building something on your own. You second guess yourself constantly. You compare yourself to people who had more access, more funding, more support. But I know I had to keep going anyway.

Those experiences shaped how I run Poema. I am deeply aware of what it feels like to be overlooked, to be underestimated, and to be working twice as hard just to stand in the same room. That is why I am so intentional about who and what Poema supports. The studio is built to create space for voices, visions, and stories that are often pushed to the margins. The road has not been easy, but everyday it gives me a very clear sense of purpose.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
My agency, Poema Los Angeles, is a full service creative marketing and consulting studio. At its core, we help brands, artists, and founders shape how they show up in the world not just visually, but emotionally and culturally.

My entire career journey and the work to show from it truly sits at the intersection of creative direction, storytelling, and strategy. In essence, I create and build brand worlds. That can look like campaign visuals, social media ecosystems, experiential events, PR positioning, or print projects like PERISH Magazine. The through line is always intention. I am not interested in fast content or trend chasing. My agency is only interested in creating things that feel considered, beautiful, and lasting.

What I specialize in is translating a founder’s vision into something people can feel. Many of my clients come to me with something special but undefined. My role is to give it shape, language, and presence, whether that is for a restaurant, a fragrance brand, a fashion label, or a cultural project.

I am most proud of the fact that Poema has grown entirely through trust and word of mouth. Every client, every collaboration, every opportunity has come from someone believing in the work and passing it forward. In 2025, Poema became a full time studio supporting multiple brands while also launching PERISH, a print publication that brings together fashion, fragrance, and independent creators in a way that does not exist elsewhere.

What has always set me apart is that I move fluidly between art and strategy. I understand data, digital marketing, and growth, but I approach them through a creative lens. I care just as much about how something performs as how it actually feels. That combination allows me to build brands that are not only visually strong, but culturally relevant and commercially sustainable.

At the end of the day, I am here to help people tell their stories in a way that honors where they came from and where they are going.

Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
Something that surprises people is how much of what I have built is completely self funded and many of my skills were self taught. Poema, PERISH, every project I have touched has been created without outside investors or institutional backing. It has all come from trusting my instincts and reinvesting every dollar back into the work.

Most people also do not know that my background is in English literature. I was an English major with a deep love for Victorian and Southern Gothic writing. That love for atmosphere, emotion, and storytelling is really at the root of everything I create, even when I am working in fashion, fragrance, or digital spaces.

And before any of this, I was a teen. I was briefly in a band. I was a Tumb1r-era girl who endured insane side quests to pile sales and house shows. I was an optimistic millennial. I spent years riding my bike, writing, creating floor to ceiling collages in my room and building worlds through my love of music. That part of my life still informs how I approach branding. To me, every brand is a kind of album. There is a mood, a story, a mythology behind it.

My lore really is deep, and I like it that way!