Western Reserve Academy Breaks Ground on Wang Makerspace
Jun 5, 2026 (Hudson, OH)
As the world grapples with how to prepare students for a future shaped by artificial intelligence, entrepreneurship and rapidly changing technologies, global business leader and inventor CJ Xuning Wang and his CJ Wang Foundation helped break ground on a facility that will provide advanced hands-on learning for students, making them better equipped to turn ideas into reality.
Western Reserve Academy is celebrating a second major investment in their innovation ecosystem from the CJ Wang Foundation, supporting innovation and entrepreneurship at the school. The gift will support a 16,000-square-foot expansion of the school's makerspace and innovation facilities and serves as the first step in a broader aspiration: creating a model that can inspire similar innovation centers at schools across the country.
"Students learn best when they are given the freedom to create, build, experiment and solve real problems. I’m honored to partner with such a special school.The new Wang Makerspace will attract more students to WRA and help them not only think big but to build something big.” - CJ Xuning Wang
The expanded facility at WRA, known as the Wang Makerspace, will serve as the centerpiece of WRA's new Center for Arts, Innovation and Humanity. The project reflects WRA and Wang's shared belief that future-ready education must combine technological fluency with creativity, ethics, communication and human-centered thinking.
Wang's vision is deeply informed by his own career as an engineer, inventor and entrepreneur. As founder of the home appliance company Joyoung, Wang invented the world's first automatic soymilk maker and built one of China's most successful consumer brands. Today he serves as Chairman and Refounder of SharkNinja, whose products are used by millions of households around the world.
His original gift established WRA's Wang Innovation Center in 2017, a facility that transformed teaching and learning on campus and became one of the school's defining educational spaces. Students use the makerspace to engage in robotics, engineering, digital fabrication, entrepreneurship, design thinking and emerging technologies. The center has become a model for interdisciplinary learning and is frequently cited by prospective families as a defining feature of the WRA experience.
The groundbreaking also celebrates two additional gifts that will establish the Hannah Han Artificial Intelligence Lab and the Jeanne Donovan Fisher Theater, as well as the support of the EE Ford Foundation for developing a center for Food Innovation, Service and Sustainability. Together these reinforce WRA's belief that technology and humanity should advance together.
"Our Bicentennial is not simply about honoring 200 years of history," said Suzanne Walker Buck, Head of School. "It is about imagining the next century of education. CJ Wang's vision challenges all of us to think bigger about how schools can cultivate innovators, creators and leaders. His investment in WRA is helping build a model that reaches far beyond our campus."
