USA

Sweet Vegan grew out of my love of creating healthy and delicious treats for people I care about. Although for most of my life I couldn’t imagine running my own food company, my journey to doing so began in an Indiana kitchen, learning to cook and bake from my maternal grandmother, Georgia.

When I was six, my parents separated and my mother, a schoolteacher, was left to raise five children on her own. As the eldest daughter, I became responsible for a lot of the cooking for the family. My love of making desserts and especially lovely, decorated cakes flourished under my grandmother’s example and instruction.

That same passion for the aesthetic of cake decorating fueled my interest in design. This led me from Indianapolis to Parsons School of Design in New York City and on to a successful career as an interior designer.

Many years later, while visiting New York City, my mother took a tumble and became my long-term houseguest. To aid in her healing, I hired a personal chef to prepare vegan meals.

Working alongside the chef in my own kitchen brought me right back to those wonderful, youthful days cooking with Grandma Georgia. It wasn’t long after my mother returned to her home in Florida that I decided to enroll in The Natural Kitchen Cooking School. In 2008, my proud mother returned to NYC to celebrate my graduation.