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After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in economics from Colgate University, D.C.-native Rachel Thebault worked as an investment banker for seven years. During that time, she started making chocolates for parties and weddings. She thought about leaving her job for the culinary world for a long time before finally quitting and enrolling at ICE. By the end of the externship at Chanterelle in 2004, she was seven months pregnant. At the time, the restaurant’s pastry chef, Kate Zukerman, was working on her cookbook, The Sweet Life.

Thebault stayed on to help her test recipes until three days before delivering the first of her two daughters. After a few months of maternity leave, she rented a kitchen on the Upper West Side with another esteemed ICE graduate, Elisa Strauss, and exhibited at the Chocolate Show in both 2005 and 2006. In July 2006, she signed the lease for her current Tribeca space and opened her store, Tribeca Treats, in early 2007. She specializes in custom cakes, cupcakes, chocolates, and cookies, saying that her favorite part of the job is being part of the joy at clients’ milestone events. She has won the City Harvest’s Gingerbread Extravaganza twice.