The Garage’s 10-Year Celebration Reflects a Decade of Growth

Northwestern alumni, trustees, students, and University President Michael Schill gathered Monday, April 14 to celebrate a major milestone: ten years of The Garage.

An 11,000 square-foot converted space tucked within a university parking garage, The Garage has helped launch over 1,500 student startups since its inception in 2015.

Collectively, these startups have raised more than $1.5 billion in funding. Some turned into life-saving medical devices. Others became educational games, sustainable fashion tools, or accessibility tech for people with disabilities.

The numbers are impressive, but the stories say even more.

“I visited The Garage when I was an admitted student. I was probably peering through the windows, trying to see what people were doing,” said Northwestern sophomore Lance Locker, a Resident at The Garage, with a laugh. “I knew about this space since before I applied. And once I got on campus, it was like a no-brainer, that this is the place I belong.”

At the 10-year celebration, Chair of Northwestern’s Board of Trustees Peter Barris recalled the early vision that helped bring The Garage to life: wanting The Garage to be so prominent on campus that it became a “stop on the campus tour.”

“It is beyond my wildest dreams,” Barris said as he addressed the crowd. “I’ve seen so many letters from prospective students and students who graduated from Northwestern that said this is why they came here, and this is the most memorable experience they had while they were here.”

President Michael Schill echoed this impact, calling The Garage “a place where ideas are fostered, where innovations are brought to life and where companies are birthed.”

“Entrepreneurship has long been a fundamental tenet that moves society forward and also something that moves the university forward. The Garage makes that possible,” Schill said at the event.

For Executive Director of The Garage Mike Raab, The Garage represents a transformation not just in resources, but in mindset.

“I remember feeling a culture on campus around the real fear of failure or stepping off the beaten path,” Raab said, recounting his experience as a Northwestern undergraduate years before The Garage’s launch. “What would happen if I tried something entrepreneurial and it didn’t work? ‘How embarrassing.’”

But when Raab returned to Northwestern in 2020 to lead The Garage in Evanston, he found that fear had begun to fade.

In its place came a campus culture where experimentation was celebrated.

“I attribute much of this shift to the culture that The Garage brought to campus. Having a space and support system at Northwestern where you weren’t just given permission to try something even if it might not work, but actively encouraged to share your failures and what you learned from them at a weekly Family Dinner, transformed the idea of failure for Northwestern students,” Raab said.

One program that captures this ethos at The Garage is the Little Joe Ventures Fellowship, launched in 2018 by Tony Owen (‘97, ‘03 MBA) and his wife Monique.

At The Garage’s 10-year celebration, Owen had the opportunity to meet the current and incoming cohorts of Little Joe Ventures Fellows, selected each year for their commitment to entrepreneurship.

“We have Fellows out in the universe who have used some of the skills, the network, and the confidence that they built coming through The Garage and the fellowship to go off and actually start their own business,” Owen said. “Now they’re teaching the next generation.”

As the evening wrapped up, alumni mingled with current students over food and paged through The Garage’s First Decade Yearbook.

What started as a bold idea in 2012, backed by a new committee at the Board of Trustees, has blossomed into one of the most dynamic spaces on campus.

Barris, who chaired the committee that helped bring The Garage to life ten years ago, put it best:

“What I love about The Garage is it gives people experiences they can leverage, regardless of what they do. They can go off and be a kindergarten teacher and they’ll learn things here that will help them in their lives. I’m convinced of that.”