Bridgit Mendler started out as a child actress and quickly gained stardom thanks to her appearance in Disney Channel’s Good Luck Charlie. In this, she played Teddy Duncan, and the viewers instantly fell in love with her. Not only acting but in the 2010s she also started her music career with some well-acclaimed albums to her name.
Despite this, the actress had a knack for education and took a break from acting to focus more on her studies. In 2018 the actress announced via Twitter that she has started a graduate program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
After which she joined Harvard as well. In this article, let’s take a closer look at her life, education, and whether she has a PhD yet or not.
Bridgit Mendler’s Journey from Acting to Entrepreneurship
Bridgit Mendler was just 12 years old when she got her first voice acting role in the animated movie The Legend of Buddha. But her first acting role was in the television show General Hospital. After this, she did a couple of more voice gigs and made her movie debut at the age of 15 in Alice Upside Down.
In the midst of this, her most notable role was that of Teddy Duncan in Good Luck Charlie, which she played for four years from 2010-2014. During this time, she also dived deeper into the world of music when she contributed to the soundtrack of Lemonade Mouth in 2011.
Mendler then also signed with Hollywood Records the same year and launched her debut album Hello My Name Is.. in 2012. This track was well received and peaked at number 30 on the Billboard 200. Apart from her acting and music endeavors, the actress was also quite interested in education.
So, she took a step back from everything and got herself enrolled at the University of Southern California for anthropology and earned her degree in 2016 via Page Six.
The actress was not done here and in 2018 she announced that she has started a graduate program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a focus on improving social media. She is currently working towards receiving her PhD from MIT after completing her M.S. in media arts and sciences.
According to her LinkedIn, she also enrolled in Harvard Law School in 2021 to get her Juris Doctor and also served as the co-president of the University’s Space Law Society. Mendler graduated in May of this year. After all of this, she alongside her husband Griffin Cleverly launched their startup Northwood Space in February.
Does Bridgit Mendler have a PhD?
Only a few in the industry would leave their highly successful careers behind to pursue something else entirely. This was the main reason why Bridgit Mendler made headlines when she detailed her academic pursuits. So, much so that the audience started misunderstanding what was written on her LinkedIn profile.
She cleared the same during an interview via People and added that her LinkedIn profile has been causing a lot of confusion for everyone. On her PhD status, she revealed “I am 2 months away from a JD and I don’t already have my PhD.”
This interview happened in the month of March and by May she graduated from Harvard after earning her JD. For her PhD, she added:
The PhD is something I started working towards in 2020 and I pursued it jointly with my law degree but when I moved to California last summer and decided that for family reasons we would stay on the west coast, it had to go on pause. I apologize I really should have updated my LinkedIn page sooner.
She continued on her doctoral status by adding:
I’ll still fight for it, but how it gets completed is up to the administration and my principal investigator and what they think is appropriate.
While the former actress has yet to get her PhD degree, she has undeniably put hard work into her education. So, much so that she’s now a CEO of a company that she created alongside her husband. While the entire world came to a halt during the COVID-19 pandemic, the couple on the other hand came up with the idea of launching their startup.
Bridgit Mendler Is the CEO and Co-Founder of Northwood Space
Bridgit Mendler has not released new music since 2017 and acted in a project after her last appearance in 2019’s Marry Happy Whatever. But she has been making waves in the space industry alongside her husband. Early this year, the former actress launched her company Northwood Space, which is a startup aimed to revolutionize satellite communication.
The main focus of her company is to create ground stations such as large antennas that would connect Earth to satellites. According to Bridgit Mendler, her startup’s vision is to simplify how data is sent to and from space. She added via CNBC:
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.
Mendler serves as the CEO of the company and has already secured $6 million in funding from investors such as Founders Fund and Andreessen Horowitz to name a few. Her husband, Griffin Cleverly, also plays a pivotal role in the company as the Chief Technology Officer. The meaning behind the name of the company is also interesting and is a tribute to a lake in New Hampshire.
The idea for the same came to the actress when she lived near the lake with her family during the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, she and her husband attempted to build an antenna using materials from Home Depot. She joked:
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.
On a more personal note, after her business announcement, Mendler also shared that she’s a mom and adopted her son in late 2022, after fostering him for a year. She posted via X:
The other news I wanted to share is I’m a mama to a sweet 4yo boy. Started fostering in 2021 adopted near 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 💛 pic.twitter.com/o8gU4gtHso
— Bridgit Mendler (@bridgitmendler) February 20, 2024
Her inclination towards space technology also comes from her parents. She added via an Atlantic Live Event in 2018 that “I have two engineer parents.” Her mother was an architect, and her dad used to design car engines adding “So there was a lot of math-y science-y talk when I was a kid. ”
Despite this, the former actress has surely surprised fans with her talents whether it be acting or entrepreneurship.
