From starring in TV shows to founding her own space company, this actress turned CEO has almost done it all.
You may know Bridgit Mendler for her roles in Disney’s Wizards of Waverly Place, Good Luck Charlie, and Lemonade Mouth. Well now, at 31 years old, she’s the co-founder and CEO of Northwood Space.
“At Northwood, we’re rethinking infrastructure for satellite backhaul from the ground up. We have our sights on building a data highway between earth and space. We are designing shared ground infrastructure from first principles to expand access to space,” Mendler wrote in a LinkedIn post.
READ ALSO: Bright Young Leaders: Meet 2024’S 30 Under 30
In other words, the company aims to mass-produce ground stations that are used to communicate with satellites in space. “We have a lot of work ahead of us but that’s the fun part,” Mendler added.
Northwood now has an initial funding of $6.3 million, led by firms such as Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, Also Capital, and Humba Ventures. According to Mendler’s LinkedIn post, some of their early employees have experience at Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Palantir Technologies, and Northrop Grumman.
Acting and Singing Days
After acting in a couple of films such as The Clique and Labor Pains, Mendler officially became a Disney actor in 2009. From featuring in one episode of Jonas to getting a recurring role in Wizards of Waverly Place, she was on track to getting her very own show.
In 2010, she became the star of Good Luck Charlie and played the character of Teddy Duncan for four years. She also had a lead role in the Disney Channel Original Movie Lemonade Mouth.
The film eventually launched Mendler’s music career which spawned her studio album Hello My Name Is… and her EP Nemesis. The actress turned singer also embarked on three concert tours within North America from 2012 to 2017.
While Mendler’s latest acting credit is from 2019 (with the sitcom Merry Happy Whatever) the Disney star was actually already busy pursuing her higher education.
New Beginnings
In 2016, Mendler began furthering her studies, first with a degree in anthropology from the University of Southern California. Two years later, Mendler announced on X that she would be starting a graduate program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
According to her LinkedIn profile, Mendler is studying at Harvard Law School to get her Juris Doctor. Slated to graduate this year, she also served as co-president of Harvard’s Space Law Society.
“I have two engineer parents, my mom’s an architect and my dad designs car engines. So there was a lot of math-y science-y talk when I was a kid,” Mendler said at an Atlantic Live event in 2018, explaining her path from Disney to MIT.
After announcing the launch of her new space company, co-founded by her husband Griffin Cleverly, she also revealed that they are now the parents of a four-year-old boy. The couple started fostering in 2021 and officially adopted their child around Christmas of 2022.
“I’m so lucky—being a parent is the biggest gift and most defining experience there is. That’s my news for now folks,” Mendler shared on X.
Banner image via Bridgit Mendler’s LinkedIn page.
-2.jpg){kind=link}