Lights, Camera, Entrepreneurship!

Fueled by her undergraduate experiences at the Farley Center and The Garage, Adala Makhulo is embracing various opportunities in the entertainment industry.

Not long after arriving on the Northwestern University campus in fall 2019, Adala Makhulo learned about the Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and The Garage, Northwestern’s student startup hub.

Immediately, she was intrigued. After all, Makhulo had dreams of someday leading her own film production company in Kenya, where she was born and raised before attending an international high school in India.

“These were resources I knew I had to take advantage of,” said Makhulo, a Radio/TV/Film major in Northwestern’s School of Communication.

In her first Farley Center course, the survey-style Principles of Entrepreneurship class, Makhulo felt energized and engaged. Entrepreneurship surged from an interest into a passion, and she enrolled in Farley’s undergraduate minor in entrepreneurship to expand her understanding.

In Personal Branding, Makhulo deeply reflected on how her values and business ambitions could go hand in hand. In NUvention: Arts & Entertainment, she teamed with five graduate students to develop a business selling alcohol-infused popsicles at live events.

Farley courses taught her the nuts and bolts of building a business and emphasized being comfortable with trial and error.

“So often, uncertainty and failure are thought of as things to avoid, but Farley helped me see those things as necessary parts of a process to stimulate growth,” said Makhulo, who also earned a psychology minor at Northwestern.

A self-described “type A personality” who admittedly prefers to execute projects herself, Makhulo also learned the critical importance of collaboration and active listening.

“You need to afford people the space to contribute their skills and find meaning,” she said. “That’s how good ideas become great.”

Beyond her Farley classes, Makhulo became involved with The Garage, where her startup was selected to participate in the Jumpstart Pre-Accelerator program, an initiative designed to accelerate early-stage student teams by giving them additional resources and coaching over a 10-week period. Jumpstart helped Makhulo launch 3 Point Productions, a film production company creating content for Kenyan youth, and “Exposition,” a YouTube series featuring young adults from Kenya discussing relevant topics like colorism and mental health in a roundtable-styled format.

“I want Kenyan youth to see themselves represented on screen, so they don’t have to rely on Western media as a source for entertainment or information,” said Makhulo, adding that “Exposition” has amassed over 40,000 views online and more than 100,000 impressions across various social media channels.

Since graduating in June 2023, Makhulo has thrown herself into the entertainment industry, largely as a freelancer. Last spring, she spent three months in Fiji working on the 47th and 48th seasons of “Survivor,” specifically helping to test and develop the CBS show’s contestant challenges.

Now living in Seattle, Makhulo is working as a production coordinator for Jack Morton, an experiential agency specializing in the production of live events. She also supports the Seattle Black Film Festival’s programming team, helping to shape the lively four-day event taking place in April.

Less than two years into her full-time professional career, Makhulo recognizes the industry’s unique challenges as well as how her Farley education prepared her to capture success in a notoriously unforgiving industry.

“I’m far more prepared to advocate for myself and to tell the story of who I am and the value I bring,” she said. “That’s so important in this industry, where you need to build personal relationships with people who know your capabilities.”

While returning to Kenya and leading her own film production company remains the long-term goal, Makhulo is fully in the present, committed to continue learning the industry and expanding her skill set. It’s another part of the entrepreneurial mindset she sharpened during her time at Northwestern.

“I understand this is a process,” she said, “and I’m going to continue building my career and myself as an individual.”