The Garage x The School of Communication

The Garage is a community and physical space for every Northwestern student interested in entrepreneurship to learn, iterate, and grow. We offer students resources, programming, and mentorship designed to help build the skills and entrepreneurial mindset they need to succeed in any industry.

Students from across the University bring a wide range of diverse academic and personal experiences that enrich the entrepreneurial environment at The Garage through exposure to new ideas, ways of thinking and skill sets.

In the fall of 2022, there are 29 SoC students participating in programs at The Garage. Below are a few student stories.

Kathryn Hoffmann, SoC ’23

Kathryn is a participant in The Garage’s Activate program – designed to create an inclusive community and resources for Black Northwestern student founders.

Major: Communication – Leadership for Creative Enterprises

Project / Company: Treeify is a hardware and software duo designed to provide individual people with the means to combat carbon pollution by planting trees.

I decided to join The Garage because I’ve always been interested in starting my own business. While I understand the concept of becoming an entrepreneur, there are a lot of underlying steps that have to be carefully considered in order to garner success. The Garage’s programs have provided me with both insight and resources for initiating business ventures. I feel confident about going from the idea phase to fully operating. Of course, there are a few steps in between but I have a clearer vision about how to begin. After all, just getting started is part of the journey, and that’s where The Garage comes in!”

Herminio Bodon, SoC + McCormick ’24

Herminio is a third-year Ph.D. student building his startup, borinquen.ai. He is a current participant in The Garage’s Residency program and was a member of the spring 2022 cohort of Activate.

Major: Technology and Social Behavior

Project / Company: borinquen.ai helps people learn better with multimodal AI products.

Programs like Activate and Residency have been invaluable experiences to pursue my ideas, get resources to execute them, and build community with other motivated entrepreneurs in Northwestern and Chicago. The Garage is a very exciting place!”

Kate Lee, SoC + Bienen ’23

Kate is a member of The Garage’s Residency program building out her SaaS startup, Sync.

Major: Communication Studies
Minor: Entrepreneurship; Environmental Policy & Culture

Project / Company: Sync helps you take impeccable meeting notes by transforming your scrappy bullets into dependable, shareable, actionable minutes. The vision is to imprint an openly collaborative culture in organizations by taking the busywork out of communication.

The Residency program gave me a whole family of other ambitious, visionary, hard-working student founders to bounce ideas and bond with. I couldn’t imagine trying to build a startup without a community like this!”

SoC Students at The Garage

Tinker Program:

Katrina Li	Kathryn Hoffmann	Laya Hartman
Carolyn Zou	Sauhee Han	Lela Gannon
Kiara Hill	Vicente Castro	Lucia Delaini
Mohammad Behroozian	Asta Ceesay	Sequina King
Andrew Daniels	Michele Epps	Vincent Chen

Residency Program:

Herminio Bodon	Kate Lee	Zegale Talmadge
Leo McGuinness	Julia Chu	Emia Musabegovic
Finnegan Rollings	Julia Neus	Eugene Brye III
Arjun Kumar	Maddie Morse	Gretchen Raedle
Eli Civetta

Activate Program:

Kathryn Hoffmann

The Garage x SoC News

Mike Raab, SoC ’12 named Executive Director of The Garage

Factions of Sol featured in The Garage’s Holiday Gift Guide

Jordyn Lemer, SoC ’23 selected as Little Joe Ventures Fellow

Factions of Sol, founded by Elam Blackwell ’22, reaches Kickstarter goal in 8 hours

Adala Makhulo, SoC ’23 featured in Opportunity Fund Update

Propellers visit Stephanie March, SoC ’96 in NYC

Questions?

Email us at thegarage@northwestern.edu