Happy Hump Day POU!
Today’s feature went from the first intern at the Jordan Brand to a Global Director of Design at Nike.
Jason Mayden
Jason grew up on the South Side of Chicago in the 1990s, when Michael Jordan and the Bulls ruled the NBA. Since 4th grade, Jason dreamed of designing Air Jordan basketball shoes. He majored in industrial design at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Mich., became the first design intern at the Jordan Brand at Nike, and worked with the company for more than 13 years.
As the senior design innovation lead for Jordan Brand, Jason created strategic footwear platforms for athletes including Chris Paul, Derek Jeter, Carmelo Anthony and, of course, MJ. During this time, Jason designed the 2009 Air Jordans.
After earning a Master’s degree in management as a Sloan Fellow at Stanford, he returned to Nike as its global director of innovation for digital sport, the team that designed the FuelBand. He then served as the senior global design director for the Jordan Brand for two years, until he left Nike in November to take on a personal challenge.
Jason is a husband and father of two children, and when his nine-year-old son was experiencing rapid weight gain due to food allergies and intolerances, Jason saw first-hand its psychological effects.
Jason was prepping his children for bed with an homage to the famous Chicago Bulls chant (“What time is it? Jammy time!”) when his 10-year-old son’s forlorn expression grabbed his attention.
“My son got out of the shower. He was getting dressed, staring at himself in the mirror. I looked at his face, and I saw a face of defeat,” Mayden says. “I asked him why . . . he said, ‘I don’t can i buy viagra over the counter at boots love who I am.'”
Mayden realized he’d never grasped the psychological effect that obesity could have on a child. And he felt a sudden sense of urgency. He left Nike, he says, because it was “the natural choice that any father would make,” to devote himself to finding the cause for his son’s rapid weight gain. He wanted to understand why, though he’d thought his family was living a healthy lifestyle, his son was having difficulty breathing and sleeping. He studied nutrition, genetics, GMO food products, and the way families were eating. The culprit Mayden points to today, diagnosed after visiting several doctors, was his son’s collection of food allergies and intolerances.
Today, Mayden is joining Mark One as its first vice president of design. Having performed every conceivable design function in his 13 years at Nike—from drafting logos for Nike’s roster of famous athletes, to overseeing Nike’s digital platform, Nike+, to actually designing shoes—Mayden will need all those skills now, as his goal is to turn the Vessyl into a global brand.
From street violence to Stanford Business School to designing Nike shoes: Jason Mayden