Among the guests at a lunch co-hosted by Ambassador Stacey Feinberg and SES CEO Adel Al-Saleh was Bridgit Mendler – once on the screens of millions, now the head of a fast-growing space communications company.
Mendler rose to fame through roles in Disney productions such as Good Luck Charlie, Lemonade Mouth, and Wizards of Waverly Place, before turning to music in the early 2010s. Her debut single – Ready or Not – reached the top 20 in several countries, peaking at number seven in the UK.
Her career then took a decidedly different turn. By the time of her final acting credit – the 2019 Netflix series Merry Happy Whatever – Mendler had enrolled in, and dropped out of, an anthropology degree at the University of Southern California, before joining the MIT Media Lab, graduating from MIT in 2020 with a master's in media arts and sciences.
She then began a PhD at the institute, now on hold by her own account, while simultaneously studying at Harvard Law School, where she earned her law degree in 2024.
In 2022, Mendler co-founded Northwood Space with her husband, Griffin Cleverly, and engineer Shaurya Luthra. The company, which builds ground stations linking satellites to Earth, has raised more than $100 million since its inception.
Mendler was in good company. The lunch also gathered representatives from Cailabs, a Rennes-based satellite communications firm, alongside space-focused private equity investors and manufacturers of space communications systems and aerospace materials, including Luxembourg's own Euro-Composites Group.
The Luxembourg government was represented by Jacques Thill, government councillor at the Ministry of the Economy, and Pierre Ferring of the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, Defence, Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade.
