From Disney Star to Space CEO: How Bridget Mendler Is Quietly Revolutionizing Satellite Infrastructure

“Be more ambitious than you think you should… and do something you care about.”

— Bridget Mendler

Bridget Mendler was once a household name on Disney Channel, beloved for her starring roles in Good Luck Charlie and her pop hit Ready or Not. But today, she’s not walking red carpets, she’s walking ground stations. And in the most unexpected career pivot in recent tech history, Mendler is now the CEO of a space infrastructure startup that could shape the future of how we connect to and utilize space.

In a deep-dive interview on the Nothing But Tech podcast, Mendler shared the surprising story of her transformation — from child star to MIT researcher to founder of Northwood, a company focused on expanding satellite connectivity for Earth-based applications.

This is not your typical “child star to startup founder” story. It’s smarter. More ambitious. And it offers a blueprint for wantrepreneurs and early-stage founders on how to follow curiosity all the way to impact.

The Reinvention Nobody Saw Coming

Mendler’s journey didn’t begin with a plan to upend the space industry. It began, as many great stories do, with a question: What else is out there?

While still acting, she began taking undergraduate courses. A visit to the MIT Media Lab while filming a Netflix movie became the spark. “I was just curious,” Mendler shared. “Seeing the Media Lab made me realize there was this whole other world where people expressed creativity through engineering”.

That visit turned into a tweet to the lab’s director, which led to a fellowship, then grad school. Her early research? Analyzing social media discourse — a nod to her storytelling roots.

But the real inflection point came when her lab desk sat next to the “Space Enabled” team, which worked on using satellites for Earth-based applications like monitoring invasive plants and natural resources. “To think that space was being used for something impactful on Earth was a new revelation for me,” she said.

Why Satellites Matter More Than Mars Missions

Forget Hollywood tropes about space being all about Mars and aliens. Mendler sees satellites as essential Earth infrastructure — critical to solving real problems today.

She breaks down satellites into three categories:

• Data from space: Earth observation for agriculture, disaster monitoring, even illegal fishing detection.
• Data through space: Communications like Starlink, enabling internet access in hard-to-reach areas.
• Data for space: Controlling and monitoring spacecraft movements in orbit.

Most people underestimate just how much of our daily lives depend on space: GPS, financial systems, power grids — all powered by precision satellite timing. “It’s nanosecond accuracy,” Mendler explained. “Before satellites, synchronizing time over long distances was really hard”.

Northwood: The Space Startup Changing the Game

So where does Mendler’s startup — Northwood — come in?

While satellite companies are growing rapidly, most lack one key piece of infrastructure: ground stations. These are the physical antennas on Earth that talk to satellites. SpaceX has built many for itself, but smaller players are left scrambling.

“Without access to ground stations, you limit how many images you can capture or how many users you can serve,” Mendler said. “We’re building shared infrastructure — like cell towers — so that other companies can scale faster”.

It’s a clever play: Instead of launching satellites, Northwood is focused on the overlooked but mission-critical infrastructure that makes them useful. And they’re already running early customer pilots.

Ambition, Authenticity, and the Art of Reinvention

If there’s one takeaway from Bridget Mendler’s journey, it’s this: curiosity compounds.

From sitcom sets to space law, she followed her interests across fields and disciplines, acquiring skills not for resume-building, but for building meaningful things. Her advice to entrepreneurs?

“Just do it… and be more ambitious than you think you should. If you’re going to pour your life into something, make it something meaningful”.

She also offers a dose of humility: “I’m not the smartest person in the room. But that doesn’t matter if you’re earnestly seeking to do the right thing and improve.”

For Founders: Why This Story Matters

Bridget Mendler’s career path defies linear logic, but it mirrors the nonlinear path of many successful startups. She didn’t pivot because her old career failed. She evolved because her interests deepened. And when opportunity knocked — whether in the form of a tweet to MIT or an antenna prototype during COVID — she answered.

Here’s what founders can learn:

• Follow your curiosity across disciplines.
• Earn the right to build by learning the technical skills yourself.
• Solve real infrastructure problems, not just shiny front-end ideas.
• Think globally from Day 1, especially in frontier industries like space.

Mendler’s move into space is not a vanity project. It’s a bold bet that the next generation of infrastructure will be off-planet — and that someone has to build the bridges to it.

Turns out, she’s been building bridges her whole life.