By Sarah BregelFeatures correspondent
Getty ImagesBridgit Mendler, who is known for roles on Good Luck Charlie and other Disney shows, is entering new territory: space.
Disney has successfully launched the careers of mega stars like Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez. But now, one former child actress who appeared on the network is launching something else: a space company.
Bridgit Mendler, a 31-year-old singer and actor best known for playing Teddy Duncan on the Disney Channel original series Good Luck Charlie, announced this week on X, (formerly Twitter), that she’s entering uncharted territory: She’s launching a California-based satellite data startup called Northwood Space.
Mendler will be the CEO of the company, and her husband, Griffin Cleverly, whom she married in 2019, will take on the role of chief technology officer. “Expect the unexpected!” she wrote on X, responding to a CNBC reporter who broke the news.
Ari Eisenstat, the space program director for the upcoming Texas Eclipse Festival says that Mendler’s foray into science “is a great example of space moving from the domain of governments to becoming accessible to everyone”. Eisenstat adds that we should all be watching “younger generations to see diverse entrepreneurs create social, economic, and environmental impact in the space community”.
Investors have already thrown $6.3m (£4.9m) in seed funding at the company, according to Mendler’s post on X, in which she said she hopes to create “a data highway between Earth and space.” Mendler continued, “We have a lot of work ahead of us but that’s the fun part.”
Getty ImagesWill Bridgit Mendler’s education set her up for Northwood Space success?
While it may come as a surprise to her fans, Mendler has long had interests outside of acting. She graduated from the University of Southern California in 2016 before she started working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab in 2017. She enrolled in the graduate program in 2018, and then began a doctorate in philosophy at MIT in 2020. The next year, Mendler enrolled in Harvard Law School.
Then, Mendler told CNBC, the seed of the Northwood idea was planted while she was spending time in New Hampshire under COVID-19 lockdown. “While everybody else was making their sourdough starters, we were building antennas out of random crap we could find at Home Depot. For me, why the ground-side matters is because it actually is about bringing the impacts of space home to people.” But it wasn’t until she started working at the Federal Communications Commission in 2022 that she realised her new path: She told CNBC that’s when she “completely fell in love with space law”.
Mendler’s huge news has her fans excited to follow along, and her announcement on X has over 23,000 likes at present. As for Northwood Space, which aims to mass-produce large ground antennas that connect to satellites in space, the startup’s reps write: “The one-lane rickety road for space data needs to adapt to a ten-lane highway routing continuous traffic across the globe.”And as a woman in science who changed career paths to pursue her dream, Mendler may likely inspire other women to make timely career pivots.
Environmental science educator Laurie Bardon Syphard says she’s impressed by the credentials on Mendler’s resume and is already a fan of her new venture. “My gut is telling me that she is going to go really far with this career in science and technology,” she says, adding that the young scientist’s fans from Disney will likely keep tabs on her, especially because space is “one of the areas that just is exciting and inspires people”.
Mendler’s fans seem to agree already, and have taken to X to applaud her continued success. One fan wrote: “She is Barbie. Like 12 different careers. Singer/songwriter, actress, Harvard doctorate of law recipient, MIT PHD student , CEO of a startup.”