Bridgit Mendler, the American actress and singer-songwriter is now a founder and CEO of the Los Angeles-based startup Northwood Space. The space program plans to produce ground stations, or antennas on the Earth that connect and send information to satellites.
The 31-year-old has a net worth of $2 million, as per Celebrity Net Worth. The actress is known for her work in Good Luck Charlie, Wizards of Waverly Place, and Lemonade Mouth, and is now peering into a new career in the space industry. She told CNBC on Monday, February 19, 2024,
"The vision is a data highway between Earth and space. Space is getting easier along so many different dimensions but still, the actual exercise of sending data to and from space is difficult. You have difficulty finding an access point for contacting your satellite."
The project has an initial funding of $6.3 million.
Disney star Bridgit Mendler launches satellite data startup Northwood Space as CEO
On Monday, February 19, 2024, Mendler announced that she is launching a new space program as CEO of the start-up Northwood Space. Their headquarters is based in El Segundo, California.
Bridgit Mendler has accumulated a wealth of $2 million from her entertainment career. She made her singing debut contributing to the soundtrack of Lemonade Mouth in 2011 at the age of 17. She appeared in Disney Channel's Wizards of Waverly Place and Jonas. The actress is renowned for her music and acting roles but she has also gained several accolades in academics, as per People.
In 2020, Bridgit Mendler completed her graduate degree at MIT and started her Ph. D with MIT's Center for Constructive Communications and Social Machines group. She spoke about her “engineering household” with CNBC and added that time at the Federal Communications Commission’s new Space Bureau is where she “completely fell in love with space law."
Bridgit Mendler's start-up Northwood is not focused on building rockets or satellites but rather aims to mass-produce ground stations. These ground stations are also known as teleports which are typically large and have circular antennas that connect to satellites in space, as per The Hollywood Reporter.
Bridgit Mendler is working on the project with the chief technology officer, her husband, Griffin Cleverly, and the head of software Shaurya Luthra, as per Deadline. Cleverly and Luthra have previously spent time at Lockheed Martin as engineers. Griffin was part of communications at the Mitre Corporation. Shaurya has been building the ground station network of the satellite imagery venture Capella Space for the past four years.
Talking about their project Shaurya Luthra said that the company is aiming to build satellite ground stations that are designed with the priority of fast production and deployment flexibility.
Bridgit Mendler said that the idea for Northwood Space came while she was with her family during the COVID-19 pandemic, as per CNBC. She added,
"While everybody else was making their sourdough starters, we were building antennas out of random crap we could find at Home Depot … and receiving data from [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] satellites For me, why the ground-side matters is because it actually is about bringing the impacts of space home to people."
The Northwood Space has attracted some high-profile venture investors, including Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, and Also Capital. They have an initial funding of about $6 million so far, as per The Hollywood Reporter.
The actress also recently revealed that she is now a mother of a 4-year-old son she adopted on Christmas of 2022.