Jordan Hasek

By Zoë Eitel
When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down a lot of work places in Chicago, SET ACTIVE started hosting community Zoom meetings for people to ask questions of business owners and influencers. Jordan Hasek tuned in to one of these meetings and asked a question that led him to talking about how he’d love to intern for the company one day. He was encouraged to email in his resume and portfolio by one of the employees.
“The next thing I knew I was on the phone with the owner/founder the very next day and she offered me a summer internship position,” Jordan says.
Jordan’s first two weeks at the company were remote, but at the beginning of July, he joined the small in-person team that was working out of the owner’s home. The team also included people who live out of state, so a lot of communication was done with them over Slack.

Studio Intern at SET ACTIVE

BA Graphic Design 2021

Though he is a graphic design major, Jordan didn’t take this internship to do graphic design. He ran their TikTok and Twitter accounts, assisted on weekly photoshoots, pitched campaigns and product ideas, sat in on production meetings, sourced influencers, and helped with anything else that would pop up throughout the day.

“This internship taught me a lot about myself. This was actually the first time I had been away from my family and my hometown for more than a month. I was in a completely new town and didn’t know a single person other than my cousin who lived a few towns over. It was a completely new experience but I’m so glad I did it.”

“I took this internship because I wanted to learn more about the production and manufacturing side of a clothing brand since I plan on going into the fashion industry,” he says.
So much graphic design goes into the fashion industry, and Jordan was able to learn more about some of these aspects of the industry while interning for SET ACTIVE. The internship also taught Jordan a lot about himself and what he is capable of.
“This was actually the first time I had been away from my family and my hometown for more than a month,” he says. “I was in a completely new town and didn’t know a single person other than my cousin who lived a few towns over. It was a completely new experience but I’m so glad I did it.”
SET ACTIVE was Jordan’s third internship and the most intense one for him.
“It was a very interesting work dynamic and environment since most of the team was made up of the owner’s friends,” Jordan says. “Because of the preexisting friendships, there were a lot of blurred lines and they weren’t the best at communicating and weren’t well organized which was a bit challenging for me since my past two internships were very structured and planned out.”
With his graduation coming up, Jordan plans to look for another internship or a full-time job to further his career goals.