The Garage Welcomes Lilliana Robinson as Director, The Garage San Francisco

The Garage is thrilled to welcome Lilliana Robinson to the team as the Director of The Garage San Francisco (TGSF). Lilliana will lead Northwestern's entrepreneurship efforts in the Bay Area out of Third Coast Foundry, the university’s new space and the new home of TGSF.

For Lilliana, the role is a homecoming. Her entrepreneurial journey began at The Garage as a Northwestern student in 2018, where she founded two student startups, served as a Garage Resident, was named a Little Joe Ventures Fellow, and led EPIC, Northwestern's undergraduate entrepreneurship club. Her student safety startup, NPowerU, won the ImproveNU Challenge and received funding from the university.

After beginning her career as a software engineer, Lilliana spent nearly six years at Techstars, where she led Techstars Chicago before launching and leading Techstars San Francisco. She is also an Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at Northwestern's Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the co-founder of Shokuna, a research consulting firm that helps later-stage startups make strategic decisions through customer discovery.

"We're so excited to have Lilliana, who is an alum of The Garage, joining the team! Lilliana has extensive experience in the startup ecosystems in both Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area, and will bring fresh ideas and energy to our alumni initiatives!" shared Mike Raab, Executive Director of The Garage.

We recently sat down with Lilliana to learn more about her and the future of The Garage SF:

What drew you to the Director role, especially coming back as an alum of The Garage?

What drew me to the role was that it felt like a perfect intersection of my experience and my community. In 2023, I was sent to the Bay Area to help launch Techstars' first ever programs there, including Techstars San Francisco. Through that work, I realized that one of my strengths, and one of the things I most enjoy, is building entrepreneurial ecosystems for institutions that are establishing a deeper presence in the Bay Area.

Doing that now for Northwestern is especially meaningful because Northwestern is where my path into entrepreneurship began. As a second-year student, I joined a Northwestern trek to San Francisco, where we visited the University's presence in the city and met alumni working across startups and technology companies. That experience fundamentally changed my career trajectory. Soon after, I became deeply involved in The Garage, and I knew very early that working with founders was the kind of work I wanted to dedicate my career to.

What is your vision for what TGSF becomes under your leadership?

My vision is that any Northwestern student can have an idea in Evanston, reach out to TGSF, and quickly get connected to the person or resource that can help move them forward, whether that's a mentor, a peer, an operator, or an investor.

That means two things. First, building a stronger global community for Northwestern alumni founders, regardless of where they live. Second, creating a much more connected ecosystem for our alumni in the Bay Area, using Third Coast Foundry as a true home base for that community.

Ultimately, I want The Garage SF to be a place where Wildcats help other Wildcats grow faster, get better support, and access opportunities they may not have been able to reach on their own.

What is one piece of advice you'd give a current student founder? What about an alumni founder?

For a current student founder, my biggest advice is to stay obsessed with the problem before becoming too attached to the solution. Talk to customers. Ask better questions. Look for patterns. Be willing to have your assumptions challenged. The best founders I know have a lot of humility. They care more about solving the right problem than proving that their first idea was right.

For an alumni founder, my advice is: don't assume you're on your own just because you've graduated. The Northwestern network is still there, and The Garage is here to support alumni founders, too. Get involved, come to events, meet your peers, connect with mentors, and let people know what you're building. You never know which conversation, introduction, or relationship might open a door you didn't even know was there.

Outside of work, what do you enjoy doing?

Outside of work, I love spending time with my husband and our one-year-old son. We recently relocated to the Bay Area from Seattle, so we spend a lot of our free time exploring our new home together and finding family activities. Our son is incredibly curious and outgoing, which makes discovering new places with him especially fun.

Please join us in welcoming Lilliana to the team!