Jason Mayden’s parents invested in him early on, helping him realize his dreams at Jordan Brand.

Self-Belief

Growing up on the South Side of Chicago, he believed his imagination was better than his reality after spending time in and out of the hospital. He also observed that he was different from his peers as a neurodivergent individual and often felt overlooked. In an interview held during the 2025 AFROTECH™ Conference, he revealed that he gave himself permission to dream. This became his superpower.

“In that imaginative state, I was able to give myself permission to dream and to eventually decide that who I am is enough,” he said.

“I rejoice and relish in the fact that people underestimated me and I thank them for that because it forced me to realize that I have to be the progenitor of my own outcomes and, I’m the protagonist in my own narrative. I couldn’t choose my origin story, but I can write my ending,” he continued.

Investment From His Parents

When Mayden was 10 years old, he started his first company, shoveling snow and cutting grass. He wanted to provide financial relief to his parents by purchasing some of his own items, such as school clothes. Though he describes being raised “broke economically,” his parents never stopped investing in his future.

“Rather than me asking my parents for stuff, I went out and earned the money to get it. And they would tell me, ‘If you can get half of it, we’ll put the other half up.’ So that’s when I understood investment. My parents were my first seed investors because everything I wanted, I needed to go build the MVP (minimum viable product), build the first prototype, and then they’ll say, ‘I see the vision,’ and they’ll give me $10, and I thought that was great,” he shared.

Mayden spent a lot of time with his father, an industrial engineer, after being diagnosed with septicemia at age 7. He would go to technology classes with his father, and at home, he would take out his father’s horseshoe brush and drafting pencil to create his own ideas. This coincided with the NBA’s rise to prominence, and Mayden would collect basketball cards to draw pictures of the shoes.

His mother spent time driving him around the city to find sneakers, with the little money they had. However, it wasn’t for the sole purpose of making a purchase, but for Mayden to be able to study and draw the shoes. He aspired to create products for athletes such as Michael Jordan, the legendary Chicago Bulls player who won six championship rings for the city.

First Prototype

His first prototype was a basketball card collection.

“[My parents] invested in my idea of who I wanted to be. So when I finally got the basketball card that I was looking for with this special picture of MJ in this certain pose, I would redraw the shoes all the time,” he mentioned.

Finding that card proved to be a game-changer for Mayden, prompting him to reach out to the distributor to share his ideas. He commented:

“I realized that on the back of the box, they put their world headquarters phone number back in the day. I called it, and the customer service rep was like, ‘This isn’t the way you get a job.’ … They said, ‘What you’re looking for is an internship.’ I heard that word. I’m like, ‘What is an internship?’ … I think the exact phrase he used was, ‘An internship is a job that allows you to study the company, and the company gets to study you.’ I thought that was so cool … So from that moment, the first time I was given that vocabulary, I knew I needed an internship to get to Nike,” he continued.

Journey To Jordan Brand And Paying It Forward

The rest is history. Mayden chose to attend the College for Creative Studies (CCS) in Detroit to study industrial design, following a lead from Toyota’s chief design officer in Japan. He learned of the designer through his high school track coach, who had read about him in an article.

The designer discouraged Mayden from applying to CCS due to his young age: Mayden graduated from high school at 16. Nonetheless, Mayden drove to Detroit with his parents to share his portfolio with CCS. Initially, he was rejected, but he negotiated to major in industrial design. He attended CCS between 1998 and 2002, according to his LinkedIn profile.

As AFROTECH™ previously told you, Mayden became Jordan Brand’s first design intern in 2001. He remained with Jordan Brand until 2014 — serving as its Sr. Global Design Director by that time — and returned in 2024. 

Today, Mayden serves as the chief design officer at Jordan Brand, which is a subsidiary of Nike. In his role, he feels indebted to the brand that gave him his start in the industry. He remains on a mission to pay it forward, leading Jordan Brand’s Creative Combine, a design-focused camp aimed at exposing 1,000 youth in Oakland and San Francisco to technology, engineering, mathematics, artistry, and imagination in the coming year, according to a press release.

“When you get a kid in a room who’s technically savvy, creative, but just hasn’t met someone that looks like them, that’s the unlock,” Mayden expressed.

“Sometimes you just gotta have exposure. We keep thinking that we gotta give everybody these massive platforms and opportunities. All I needed was somebody telling me to find an internship. That was it. That one word changed my whole focus. So I know that my role in this moment in time is to present myself as a possible outcome to kids who are like me,” he continued.