Before Mendler’s run as spunky teen Teddy Duncan on Good Luck Charlie ended in 2014 after four seasons, she was simultaneously pursuing pop stardom, releasing her debut album Hello My Name Is… in 2012. While she continued to make music and act, she started studying anthropology at USC, though she dropped out in 2016.
“I didn’t really understand how it worked,” she said on Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2015, explaining how she ended up with her major. “I put down, like, five different things that I would potentially want to be in as a major, and I got my acceptance letter, and it’s like, ‘You’re in anthropology!’”
But she went on to get her master’s degree in humanity and technology from MIT and graduate from Harvard Law School in 2024.
Mendler is now co-founder and CEO of El Segundo, Calif.-based Northwood Space, which aims to mass-produce the antennae that communicate with space satellites.
On the personal front, she married Griffin Cleverly in 2019 and they adopted a son toward the end of 2022.