Jake Veenstra ’20

Jake did two different internships while studying communication: working at a company in New Jersey with hundreds of employees, and then at a small firm in Michigan with a staff of about a dozen.

Jake Veenstra, a 2020 graduate, did two vastly different internships while studying Communication at Calvin: One was at a company in New Jersey with hundreds of employees, and the other was at a small firm in Michigan with a staff of about a dozen.

Although different, both internships were valuable, he said.

“I liked being able to contrast those different experiences to see what I would be most interested in after college,” he said.

Although he learned a lot in his Michigan internship, he chose to work for a large employer after graduation. He’s now a team captain for the online marketplace StockX, which operates around the world and has more than 1,000 employees. Veenstra oversees a team that performs authentication and quality assurance for the sneakers, streetwear, electronics, and other products that sellers can sell through the StockX app.

Veenstra majored in organizational communication with a minor in journalism. He said his classes in the different types of communication have been useful in his career, as well as the semester-long projects he did that enabled him to dive more deeply into the concepts he was learning.

One thing that really sticks with him about his time at Calvin was the depth and passion the professors showed in their classes and in their interactions with students.

“They were always very interested in what was going in my life personally and what my goals were so they could help me reach them,” he said. “Also, the professors did a good job of staying up to date in different types of communication so we could have discussions about the very things that were going on in our lives at that moment.”