Alice Lee
Culinary Arts
Alice Lee is by heart, and sometimes by obligation, a world traveler who has settled in New York long enough to attend culinary school. Born in Korea, she grew up in Toronto, but has been away for the last three years, first living in Germany and Poland for her previous career as a senior food technologist for Unilever, then in Korea for family reasons, and finally for close to a year, traveling through Europe, North Africa, and Asia. She worked for Unilever for seven years after earning bachelor’s degrees in food science and life science from Guelph University and Queen’s University, respectively. Once Lee obtains her culinary degree, she hopes to open a business that will reflect her interest in flavors from around the globe, and perhaps teach.

Manuel Pastrana
Hospitality Management
Manuel Pastrana comes naturally to the hospitality world, after spending more than 12 years working in customer service, including 10 years as assistant manager of a Sprint/Nextel retail location. He hopes to launch a career that will see him become the general manager of a hotel—anything but being stuck in a cubicle. Pastrana obtained an associate’s degree in hospitality management from Kingsborough Community College in 2003, but took a break from further studies after the birth of his now six-year-old daughter and one-year-old son. Pastrana, whose parents are from Puerto Rico, was born and raised in Brooklyn. He likes to play softball and football: exercise and a diet have allowed him to lose 50 pounds in the last year.

Michael Eng
Culinary Arts
Michael Eng graduated from Rutgers University with a bachelor’s degree in economics in 2009—not exactly the right time to launch a career in finance. He began working in restaurants while in high school, and continued doing so even after graduating and beginning a “real” job, which convinced him to come to ICE. The Piscataway, NJ native now lives in Chinatown. He learned basic Chinese cooking—including butchering a chicken with a cleaver and how to make dumplings—from his grandparents, but also got a healthy dose of Jacques Pépin, Julia Child, and the Food Network’s programs. Eng hopes to eventually open his own restaurant in New York. A frequent volunteer to culinary events around town, he is also an accomplished violin, piano, and guitar player.

Pamela Fisher
Culinary Management
Pamela Fisher has a clear goal: to open her own restaurant-bar, focused on fresh, good-tasting food made with natural ingredients, preferably on the Upper West Side. To prepare, she is already a member of the National Restaurant Association, the Green Restaurant Association, and New York City Cares, and assiduously absorbs everything taught in her program. She studied communications at the University of Michigan and worked in advertising and online marketing before attending ICE. Her first restaurant job was last summer in Tarrytown, NY, learning both back and front of the house. Fisher is originally from Long Island and grew up in a family who cooks a lot—including an uncle who was a chef; she decided to stay on the management side because it allowed her to bring in her business background.

Kira Jane Allen
Hospitality Management
Kira Jane Allen is a member of the first class to graduate from ICE with a diploma in Hospitality Management. She selected the program because she wants to work in a hotel, in events or guest relations, before ultimately opening her own hotel or restaurant, she hopes. The Vancouver native moved to New York eight years ago to study performance and voice at the American Musical and Drama Academy (AMDA), after having befun an acting career at 10. She then spent about six months auditioning for roles, but with little panning out started working for Tour de France restaurant group, which owns Nice Matin, Café d'Alsace, l'Express, and Pigalle, among others. She fell in love with the industry, and still works with the group six years later. After two years in front of the house at Nice Matin, she now bartends there. Allen is also a hostess and reservationist at Wylie Dufresne's wd-50, and will complete her externship at Rum and Bird, an event company. She loved her program, its instructors and guest speakers, and her classmates, who were all amazing, she said, happy that her expectations were surpassed.

Avi Amouyal
Pastry and Culinary Management
Avi Amouval came to New York from Tel-Aviv, Israel, for a vacation after the passing of his mother eight years ago—friends thought it would be a good distraction for him. Those three weeks turned out to change his life, since he fell in love with his wife after a week. After three months of daily long-distance conversations, he moved to New York permanently to be with her. Two daughters later, he offers her much gratitude for her support and her patience as his career develops, he said. Amouyal found his way to ICE after being laid off from a warehouse managing position when the recession started gave him the opportunity to explore what has been a lifelong passion for food. From his mother he learned how to cook, and from his father the idea to not be afraid to create new flavors. With the goal of opening his own wedding cake studio in a couple of years, Amouyal is externing at Kreated by K, where he already makes cake pops and cakes on his own and loves every minute of it.

Richard Chan
Culinary Arts
Richard Chan's father warned him for years to not become a cook. He knew what he was talking about, as a cook himself who worked for places such as Tao and Buddakan before focusing on Chinese restaurants. After obtaining his bachelor's degree in communications, with a minor in business administration, from SUNY Albany, Chan worked in sales and customer service for a financial firm. Being laid off allowed him to turn his hobby into his career, and finally get into the kitchen. Born and raised in New York City, Chan wants to obtain a solid foundation of French techniques and a range of flavors, but also plans on expanding his knowledge of Chinese food as much as possible. A trip with a friend last year already allowed him to do that, in contrast with previous visits that were more family oriented. He hopes to stage in Europe at restaurants such as the Fat Duck, Noma, or Arzak, before coming back to work for one of New York's top restaurants. Chan volunteers at culinary events every chance he gets, and placed fourth in the Future Chefs of Grey Poupon competition.

Jessalayne Bartel and Somerlea Contreras
Pastry and Culinary Management
Somerlea Contreras and Jessalayne Bartel are sisters who dream of opening a family business in Vancouver, Canada. To make this happen, they enrolled at ICE together, after Contreras moved to New York to follow her husband, who had gotten a job here. They were born—three years apart—and raised in a small mountain town outside of Calgary, Alberta, but spent much of their childhood traveling with their parents. The family would live in Canada for a year, then move to countries such as Thailand, France, Guatemala, the Philippines, Sierra Leone, or Ukraine for a year, to live and volunteer there. Those were not tourist trips: the sisters were put to work, often taking care of and teaching English to children. Food was an early and constant obsession no matter where they were, they said, and a large part of their memories from all these destinations. Before arriving at ICE, they worked for the same organic wood-oven pizza restaurant in Canada. The two sisters hope to complete their externships at Amy's Bread and plan on making bread the focus of their business once in Vancouver. That decision is as much a result of their passion for bread as pure practicality: they feel that the large French population of the country has the pastry market cornered. They envision an organic, farm-to-basket bakery, using products from farmer's markets and local farmers. To familiarize themselves with the growers and the community, they plan to live and work in Vancouver for two to three years before opening their business. Their parents, currently in Texas, will join them in the venture.

Jerry Arcieri
Culinary Arts
When he is not in his evening classes at ICE, Jerry Arcieri works as a sales representative for Corbis, the large photo agency. He has followed that path for more than 10 years, after a career as a photojournalist—he was published in the New York Times and New York, among others—did not prove enough to make a living. He's been cooking at home seriously since he got married seven years ago, as another form of creative outlet, and decided to get a fundamental culinary education to make a career out of it. Arcieri grew up in New Jersey, where food was a big part of his life from a young age. He would spend Sundays watching his mom, who is from Bologna, Italy, in the kitchen, helping her once he got old enough. He then worked in restaurants in the summer while an English literature major at Loyola University in Baltimore, and at legendary Italian restaurant Carmine after graduation. He chose the camera rather than the knife as his preferred tool at that point, but is now ready to get on the line again.

Mika Tanimoto
Culinary Arts and Culinary Management
Mika Tanimoto was born and raised in Los Altos, California, just south of San Francisco. The only granddaughter of two grandmothers who loved to cook and teach her what they knew, she attended a French-American school and spent her summers in Europe. She was also exposed to wine at an early age, both in the nearby Napa Valley and in France. Once she turned 21, she began going to Napa to buy wine, and has developed an extensive collection. Tanimoto received a degree in civil engineering from Duke University, then worked in investment banking in Charlotte, NC for a year, before moving back to California and spending two more years on that career path. In fall 2009, she left that world behind and moved to Mexico to teach English. She helped create a lunch program in the underprivileged school where she worked, raising enough money to serve everyone a hot meal every Thursday. Upon graduation, Tanimoto will join the management program of the Hillstone Restaurant Group in San Diego, CA, and hopes to combine her finance background and her love of food in a restaurant management career.

Jonathan Rose
Pastry Arts
Jonathan Rose is not just a workaholic; he is a careeraholic. He is a pianist and conductor—trained at Ithaca College after starting playing at 4—who currently plays rehearsals for Next to Normal on Broadway and is the resident musical director for the Metropolis Opera Project. He is also working on his pastry degree at ICE and has held a part-time administrative position at Weill Cornell Medical Center since moving to New York in 2005. The Slatington, PA native plans on opening a café in Brooklyn, with an adjacent greenhouse in which he and his partner will grow fruits and vegetables to use in the "wholesome, simple, and delicious" baked goods he will make. In the meantime, he takes advantage of all opportunities he can as a student, volunteering at James Beard Foundation dinners and at the New York Chocolate Show, for example.

Katie Burns
Pastry Arts and Culinary Management
While working on her pastry arts and culinary management diplomas at ICE, Katie Burns is also studying towards a master's degree in health policy and management at New York University. This high achiever hopes to one day combine her ideals on health and nutrition—her senior thesis in international health at Georgetown University focused on malnutrition in children in Chiapas, Mexico—and her passion for baking in a business that would sell bite-size treats and support small farmers who grow sustainable products. Those symbolize her take on nutrition, which is to focus on portion control rather than ingredient substitution, she says. She knows that she is not going to solve the country's food policy problems by baking cupcakes, she adds, but nonetheless feels strongly about supporting those ideals as a small business owner. The New Jersey native enrolled in culinary schools after working in emerging markets at Goldman Sachs for two years. She hopes to complete her externship at Disney, to learn how a company creates and delivers on the promise of a brand.

Enrique Vargas
Culinary Management
Enrique Vargas knew he wanted to open a restaurant in the 1980s already, when he was watching Jack Tripper operating his own on Three's Company. But his parents passed away, leaving him to raise his brother and sister. He worked as a parent advocate for a social work agency in the Bronx, before switching to his current career in marketing. His passion for cooking never subsided, however, fueled early on by the cooking of his Italian grandmother and numerous travels. He now shares that love with his seven-year-old daughter, who has her own apron and chef's hat, and undoubtedly soon as well with his five-month-old daughter. While his concept for a Spanish restaurant, which will feature cuisines from Latin America, Spain, and the Caribbean, is well developed, Vargas plans on enrolling in ICE's culinary arts program before launching his own operation. When he is not cooking, enjoying time with his daughters, or working on his cars, he volunteers for New York Cares and writes poetry, publishing a book of poems, Today I Thought of You, in fall 2010.

Julie Sadick
Culinary Arts
In order to avoid gaining the typical "freshman 15" while attending the University of Rhode Island, Julie Sadick decided to cook all her meals in her dormitory's kitchen. The trick worked, even if it was not a stretched for this textile merchandising major, who had cooked all her life. She has had a summer job in Ocean City, NJ since she was 14, cooking for an open-kitchen Mexican restaurant on the boardwalk. While in high school, she also worked for a high-end food delivery service. Her ultimate goal is to own a restaurant featuring the flavors of the Mediterranean—an area she has been visiting yearly since she was a child—but she plans on working for others first. She is a frequent volunteer at food events, including the New York Wine and Food Festival.

Anne Petito
Culinary Arts
Anne Petito never thought she’d work in restaurants. Upon graduating with a degree in food studies from New York University, the Dobbs Ferry, NY native embarked upon a career in food media, first with Al Roker Entertainment, then with Tiger Aspect USA, where she worked as key production assistant on TLC’s Cook Yourself Thin and was the project manager of its related cookbook, and later with Cake Productions, where she was an associate producer on web series. When she enrolled at ICE, she expected to get some culinary experience and go back to television. But after regularly volunteering in the kitchen at James Beard events, trailing in restaurants, and obtaining an externship at Danny Meier’s Maialino, she’s no longer so certain. Working alongside chefs such as Marcus Samuelsson and Sam Talbot is inspiring and exciting, she said, and has made her not wanting to put a “time limit on what’s next.” The driven student received a 2010 Culinary Arts in Kind Scholarship from Les Dames d’Escoffier, is a member of the New York Women’s Culinary Alliance and the James Beard Foundation, and also interns at the foundation.

Anthony Pipitone
Pastry Arts
Anthony Pipitone’s parents love to cook, and the family sits down to a homemade meal every night. When his mother went back to college, Pipitone started to help out in the kitchen, where he was soon enjoying himself so much that he took over all the cooking. He was raised on a 200-acre farm in Scranton, PA, where he returns every weekend. Pipitone has an associate’s degree in culinary arts from Keystone College in Pennsylvania, a four-month internship in Myrtle Beach, SC, and a stint as the chef of a pizzeria under his belt, but decided to add a pastry degree to that list to get closer to his dream of opening an artisanal bakery. He fell in love with food—and bread even more so—during a visit to his grandmother’s native Italy, when he realized how much food was part of the country’s culture. He hopes to travel and find more such experiences before setting out on his own.

Jeremiah Dittmann
Culinary Management
It’s impossible to deny one’s roots, especially when they happen to be Wisconsin’s fabled dairy tradition. Jeremiah Dittmann, who grew up on a dairy farm, is passionate about cheese and hopes to eventually open a wine and cheese bar or a cheese shop in his home state. For now, he is enjoying life in New York, where he came after two years in Minneapolis, MN, when his wife’s company offered her a better position here. Dittmann has been working in restaurants ever since he was old enough to do so, starting at the bottom and working his way up the line in the kitchen, then doing the same at the front of the house. Yet he only considered it a possible career, not “just a job” during the year and a half he spent as a bartender at Gramercy Tavern. He enrolled at ICE, and until recently tended bar at Perilla. His lease expires around the time he graduates, leaving the horizon wide open.

Gaia DiLoreto
Culinary Management
Gaia DiLoreto grew up in New Mexico, where her mother had a garden large enough to feed the whole family during the summer and a culinary curiosity that resulted in DiLoreto finding nori in her lunch box. Cooking quickly became a passion—but not a career until this past winter. DiLoreto majored in sociology at Trinity College in Hartford, CT, then worked for the hotel and restaurant employees union for two years upon graduating. She moved to New York to go to culinary school, but instead took a job with Merrill Lynch, which led to her “eleven year sidetrack,” as DiLoreto calls it, most recently in IT at an insurance company. Because of her corporate background, DiLoreto would like to work for one of the larger restaurant groups, such as Myriad Restaurant Group or Union Square Hospitality Group, before opening her own restaurant. In the meantime, she freelances for Arthur Schwartz, the famed food writer and former radio host.

Wes Jones
Culinary Arts and Culinary Management
Wes Jones’ culinary aspirations grew their roots during the three months he spent in an ashram in Virginia before enrolling in culinary school. He was a pre-med major at the University of Georgia when his mentor inspired him to take time off and move to the ashram for a while, to “get my signs realigned,” as he explained. That’s where he realized that he had a deep, emotional and spiritual connection with both food and people and that he wanted to use food to heal people. His desire to work with fresh ingredients led him to begin his externship at Dan Barber’s Blue Hill, where he hopes to continue working for at least a year, if a position opens, after being done with school. The Nashville, Tennessee native would then like to travel to California, France, and Spain to further develop his skills. Jones picked his college major because his parents and both his siblings are dentists, but his heart was not in it. His family, who has been taking him out to fine dining restaurants for as long as he can remember, is very supportive of his new career choice.

Vanessa Maltin
Culinary Arts
Vanessa Maltin attends ICE as part of her job. As the food and lifestyle editor of Delight Gluten Free, she was sent to school on assignment, and will produce six pieces based on her time here. Her goal with those articles is to teach her food-allergies-suffering readers about classic cooking techniques and inspire them to go into professional culinary careers. The magazine, which launched a year and a half ago, already has a circulation of 50,000 copies. Maltin graduated with a journalism degree from the George Washington University in Washington, DC. One of her professors recommended her for an internship at the Palm Beach Post’s DC bureau, and she soon became the healthcare reporter for the newspaper. She was diagnosed with celiac disease—which means that cannot eat any food containing gluten—after covering a National Institute of Health conference on the disease. The symptoms sounded like what she had experienced all her life, and she got tested. She became an active volunteer for the National Foundation for Celiac Disease, and wrote a book with them: Beyond Rice Cakes. The publishing company Wiley then approached her to produce another cookbook, to be released this spring. The Gloriously Gluten-Free Cookbook: Spicing Up Life with Italian, Asian, and Mexican Recipes feature 130 international gluten-free recipes. She is also the author of the blog celiacprincess.com, which receives 14,000 unique daily hits, and is busy planning her gluten-free October wedding.

Wade Tajerian
Pastry Arts
Wade Tajerian has worked as a network administrator for a law firm for 20 years. Baking for his friends made him want to take classes, but looking at ICE’s offerings, he could not decide on how to start. Tajerian then decided it’d make more sense to start with the career program and learn everything pastry from A to Z. The class he wanted to take was full, but a cancellation just a few days before start date allowed him to act on his desire. He signed his enrollment paperwork on a Friday, ran the New York Marathon on Sunday, went to work on Monday morning, and took his first class on Monday evening. Tajerian grew up in Paterson, New Jersey, in a family with no interest in food. After obtaining a liberal arts degree, he attended Sawyer, a business school in his home state, and took a land network program, which launched his career. He likes to work with his hands and has taken photography and clay sculpting classes, in addition to pastry. Tajerian is also an avid runner—he has run five marathons—who is now down to only 25 miles a week thanks to his new schedule. He hopes to spend his externship working weekends in the Hamptons.

Bryant Taylor
Pastry Arts
Bryant Taylor comes from a food family: his father was a chef in the army and his mother has always been baking. He used to cook and bake a lot himself, but stopped to focus on his now decade-long career as a corporate paralegal. Born and raised in New York, Taylor graduated from Howard University in Washington, DC with a degree in criminal justice. When work got slow because of the real estate downturn, he turned back to baking, thanks in part to the unexpected combination of skydiving and Nigella Lawson: “I was going skydiving to impress a girl,” he explained. “I went to tell my mom, who was watching Nigella on TV making a pudding that looked so good. I said that if I survived skydiving, I would make it.” The weather was bad on the day of his skydiving trip, and Taylor ended up making that pudding. He plans on eventually opening a bakery, but first combining his passion for food with his passion for travels and work on cruise ships.

Chris Henney
Culinary Arts and Culinary Management

 
Chris Henney is no newcomer to the hospitality world. As a real estate developer and commercial mortgage broker for the last 30 years, he has owned hotels in Arizona and Illinois, among a slew of other businesses, but he let others run them, he said. The full-service restaurant he plans on opening in Wethersfield, CT, will be entirely his, however. Henney already owns the building, which is right on the banks of the Connecticut River and houses a number of offices that make for a built-in customer base. He plans on having 200 outdoor seats in the summer and scale down to about 80 seats in the winter. His wife is enrolled in ICE’s pastry arts program and will contribute to the sweet side of the menu. He was born in Ohio but moved to New York to attend Columbia University. Henney is also an actor and has appeared in commercials, movies, and online movies. His three children are all professional actors

Denise Anderson
Pastry Arts and Culinary Management

Denise Anderson moved to New York from Kansas City, MO to attend ICE. Her five children encouraged her to follow what they see as making her truly happy for perhaps the first time in her professional career. Anderson had gone back to finish her bachelor’s degree and attend law school after having her fourth child, and worked as a lawyer for 20 years because it allowed her to raise her children as a single mother. She began exploring other options six years ago and even went as far as putting together a business plan and lining up investors to open a bakery in Kansas City. At the last minute she decided that she wanted a formal education, however. She plans on doing her externship in a four-star restaurant before working with a well respected chef who is as detailed and meticulous as she is. “I’m a big risk taker. I’m an entrepreneur,” she added. “I don’t mind falling flat and getting back up and doing it again. The process is what’s fun.” She no longer envisions ever going back to Kansas City and is not sure if she’ll open a bakery.

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Samia Ahad
Culinary Arts, ‘91

Samia Ahad, who is originally from Pakistan, was in her early thirties when she moved from London to New York and decided to enroll in culinary school. She had never been in a kitchen and did not grow up fond of cooking, she said, but since her husband had just graduated from law school, they did not have much money and needed to eat at home, which forced her to learn how to cook. She externed at the famed Quilted Giraffe and at March, where she ended up staying for four years. The birth of her first child made her decide to stop working in restaurants; Ahad became a freelancer, contributing to Saveur, Cook’s Illustrated, The Joy of Cooking, and helping at March when needed. In 1997, the family moved to Singapore when her husband’s law firm sent him there to establish an office. She began teaching cooking classes from her home, then in 2001 opened Coriander Leaf: The New Asian Food Hub, a full restaurant, cooking school, events space, and catering company. Ahad still personally runs 98 percent of the classes, she said, which target cooking enthusiasts, because she loves both teaching and the interaction with people that it provides. She also facilitates most of the team-building events the school offers and has started a series of wine pairing dinners. She initially did not think that she would open a restaurant, but at the time, Singapore was too small to support a stand-alone cooking school, she explained. Today, her clientele is composed half of expatriates, half of locals, with a growing number of tourists attending her classes. In 2007, she also opened the Screening Room, a five-story establishment that features a theater, a whisky bar, a restaurant, a rooftop, and a private event space. Ahad shows mostly independent movies in that space, which she pairs with special menus. Her future plans include opening a professional culinary school in Singapore and developing the business that she recently launched with her husband in the Philippines—currently a green resort, to which she hopes to add an organic farm and a cooking school. .

Virginia Muňoz
Culinary Management Program

 
Virginia Muñoz was born and raised in Leon, Mexico, where she studied industrial engineering at ITESM (Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education). She had always loved food and thought about opening a restaurant for the entire duration of her education, but wanted to first acquire a business background, because she did not feel like spending four years of college “focusing on chefs.” Her studies taught her systems and optimization processes, along with leadership skills, which can be applied to a host of industries---including a restaurant. After graduating in May 2008, she worked and took additional classes, before moving to New York in February 2009 to look at culinary schools. She knew that she wanted to study something related to the culinary world, but was not sure if it should be a culinary, pastry, or management program. Muñoz said that something “grabbed” her about the culinary management program at ICE, which has allowed her to learn about the culinary industry in New York---a previously foreign world---as well as more practical subjects such as laws and regulations, service, inventory, cost, publicity, and more. Her goal is to open either a regional Mexican restaurant in New York, with a hacienda vibe, or a lounge-style Thai restaurant back home, to capitalize on her city’s vibrant nightlife. One of her uncles opened a restaurant in Leon last summer, which allowed her to witness the process from the ground up. While in high school, Muñoz attended a summer school program at Harvard and spent a semester in Montreal. As a college student, she took summer courses in the south of France. These international travels, along with a family who likes to eat out, contributed to her love for food and restaurants. She is currently looking for a management job, to pursue while finishing her studies at ICE.

Niko Berdzenishvili
Culinary Arts and Culinary Management

 
Growing up in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, Niko Berdzenishvili also spent a lot of time on his parents’ land by the Black Sea, farming, hunting, fishing, and making wine and chacha, the local grappa, which gave him a life-long love of food. A saxophone player who also trained as an opera singer, he obtained a degree in drilling and mining engineering at the Tbilisi Technical University, after which he ran a jazz club. He enrolled at Loyola University in New Orleans in 1991, to work on music and MBA degrees. Because he needed to help support Georgian friends who were also at Loyola to escape the political situation at home, Berdzenishvili quit school to start working as a food runner at Commander’s Palace. His restaurant work let out around 10:30, allowing him to be in the French Quarter playing gigs by 11---an arrangement that works to this day, explaining his dual career path in restaurants and music. He then lived in Baltimore and Washington DC, working in several restaurants popular with the political stars of the time and playing music at their private events and in clubs. In 1999, he returned to New Orleans to enroll in the University of New Orleans’s jazz graduate program, and a year later joined New Orleans Juice, a funk band that travels around the country playing shows. By 2003, after two years on the road, Berdzenishvili considered moving back to Georgia, but decided to first visit New York. Friends found him music gigs, and he started pounding the pavement for restaurant jobs. Ben Benson’s Steakhouse gave him the opening he was looking for; he stayed there for three and a half years before working at Fiamma as maître d’ and as a bartender at Molyvos, the acclaimed Greek restaurant. After a shoulder operation due to an old rugby injury forced him to abandon his job, friends encouraged him to open his own restaurant, which prompted him to enroll at ICE. Berdzenishvili put music on hold while in school, to focus on his education. As he prepares to go on externship, however, he is starting to book gigs again, hoping that the Georgian restaurant he’ll eventually open in New York will be filled with music.

Jennifer Thurneau
Pastry Arts
Jennifer Thurneau had wanted to enroll in a culinary or pastry arts program after high school already, having always loved to bake despite not being born in a “foodie family.” She watched food shows on television every day after school and pored over cookbooks every chance she had. But her mother warned her that she’d be in the kitchen while her friends were out having fun, and suggested an alternative. Thurneau graduated with a degree in finance from the University of New Orleans, and moved to Memphis to work as a trader on a municipal bond desk. She returned to New Orleans to take on another trading job, but moved to New York after Hurricane Katrina devastated her hometown in 2005. She has been working in finance here ever since. Eventually, she tired of her desk job, and decided to pursue a career that allows her to use her hands. Thurneau’s immediate goal upon graduation is to work in restaurants, before opening a pastry shop or a café in New York within five years. A vegetarian who doesn’t mind eating eggs, as she says, she envisions a business featuring cheese, wines, breads, tarts, pies, and much more. Thurneau attends ICE four nights a week after work, thanks to a very understanding boss---and undoubtedly, to the baked goods she brings to the office every morning

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