Scott Hollander: Tomahawk Toss

Law grad launches competitive ax-throwing venue in Chicago.

It’s a Friday evening at a storefront in Chicago’s Portage Park neighborhood, where axes hurtle through the air toward solid wood planks 15 feet away. Scott Hollander ’13 JD opened the venue, Thunderbolt Chicago, to give people an opportunity to learn to throw an ax like a pro. He got the idea to open an ax-throwing business in spring 2016 after a trip to Montreal — the sport is all the rage in Canada — but he first fell in love with ax-throwing while wilderness camping in Wyoming, where he built houses with AmeriCorps after earning his undergrad degree from the University of Wisconsin. “There is something visceral about trying to get the location of the ax right by adjusting your body mechanics,” says Hollander, after demonstrating his bulls-eye technique. “And the feeling that you get when it gets lodged in the wood is satisfying.” Hollander uses the tools he learned at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law to help shape his budding business in uncharted territory. At Northwestern, Hollander took entrepreneurship classes and learned more about important small-business topics like intellectual property. “I think it’s important to note that law school can be helpful in many different ways, even if you aren’t going the traditional law firm route, and Northwestern was definitely helpful,” Hollander says.