Jasmine Jordan manages 13 WNBA players under the Jordan Brand.
Building a brand legacy takes years, dedication and skill. Preserving a legacy requires meticulous attention to detail, perseverance and foresight.
Jasmine Jordan has spent nearly a decade building her career from the bottom up while carrying on the Jordan legacy.
Although known as Michael Jordan and Juanita Vanoy’s daughter, Jordan is building a name for herself on the sidelines. Currently serving as a field representative at the Jordan Brand, she works with 13 WNBA athletes, including Aerial Powers, Dearica Hamby and Rhyne Howard. Expanding into the female athlete space, the Brand is now partnering with athletes outside the WNBA; the team recently signed Jess Sims, a Peloton instructor.
“Our consumers are keeping us honest,” Jordan states. “Our competitors are keeping us on our toes too respectfully. It’s a matter of, ‘Hey, you can’t just ride on the Jordan name forever.’ At the end of the day, he’s retired, and we’re entering the phase where these kids have never seen him play. So now, bringing them into the Brand and bringing them into the family is even harder. We knew the day was going to come. We’re starting to see it more and more, and so having the right athletes authenticate us is a huge piece of it.
We’re making those pivots and changes, and even when we’re signing our athletes, it’s not just basketball from the women’s lens. We just signed [Jess] Sims. Everyone was like, ‘How does this fit?’ When you think about it, she’s an athlete, no matter what. She’s showing up in spaces where we authentically are part of... So for us, it’s how else we can continue to evolve that and our roster. For women specifically, it will be one of the easiest but most exciting spaces to do it in.”
Growing up, Jordan’s parents influenced her work ethic; nothing was to be taken for granted, as it could be taken away at any moment. Studying sports management at Syracuse University led Jordan to work at the NBA team, the Charlotte Hornets. Jordan started as the coordinator of basketball operations focusing on the needs of the athletes and the front office. During this time, the team didn’t have a sports psychology department. She earned a certificate in Predictive Index Assessment, which the team implemented during the draft to understand the athlete better in four main areas: dominance, extraversion, patience and formality.
Michael and Jasmine Jordan with the Jordan Brand WNBA athletes.
After five seasons with the team, she felt it was time to expand her skill set. She realized that the barrier of entry for women in sports is more complex than for men; Jordan wanted to be in a position where she could either develop more athletes or connect more women into the sports space. Joining the Nike team, specifically, the Jordan Brand, would enable her to move the needle among female athletes through sport, culture and fashion.
“The Jordan culture is unapologetic,” she states. “We want to be the best of the best. We want to know that when we’re signing athletes that they’re synonymous with the brand. So when they see that jump man logo, there’s a sense of excitement; there’s a sense of privilege and joy that comes with it. The culture embodies those elements of strength, grit and hard work.”
Initially, Jordan served as a field representative in sports marketing, solely managing the relationship between the Nike Jordan Brand and the Hornets, the only Jordan team in the league. She then started picking up NBA players in the South East division before working with WNBA players. Maya Moore had already been signed but was in the process of retiring when Jordan joined the team. That’s when she began analyzing and recruiting other female athletes that would fit with the Brand.
Before signing an athlete to the Brand, Jordan likes to witness when they lose a game; how does that player react. She believes that behavior speaks louder about a person’s character than how they act when they win. Is that individual still focused on the game and their role when the score begins to waiver in the opponent’s favor? Then she looks at their social media accounts to see how they portray themselves in the public’s eye. From there, she engages in conversations with people who aren’t the player’s biggest fans to get a sense of who they are off the court.
Jordan would like to run the company one day. She understands, though, that to be an effective leader, she has to know all the areas of the company—that’s what she’s working towards in her career.
“I’m building [my legacy] by championing women and speaking where they need to be heard,” Jordan explains. “And making sure that they always feel like they have a voice... If my legacy continues to pave the way and create opportunities for women to be seen and heard in this unquote, male-dominated industry, then that’s amazing.”
Jasmine Jordan serves as a field representative for the Jordan Brand working with female athletes.
As Jordan continues to pivot in her career and preserve the Jordan legacy, she focuses on the following essential steps:
- Understand if the pivot is worth your time and energy.
- Recognize who the transition benefits. How does this affect your family and those you care about?
- Be open to a challenge. There are many ways to achieve your goal. Sometimes it’s not the first try or second plan; sometimes, the ninth or tenth strategy gets you there.
“Michael Jordan, the man, will never be duplicated,” Jordan concludes. “The athlete will not be duplicated, but the mindset, work ethic, or sweat equity that he embodied and depicted are elements that other people can take. They can be the MJ of whatever... It’s understanding that there’s never going to be another one of him. But you can still embody those elements. And that has no gender, that has no boundaries. That’s just all internally from you. That goes into how much you work and how much you want it.”
