Smith Alumna Turns Passion Into Sweet Success

With baking, Caroline Ta ’21 discovered early in her life an outlet through which to add a dash of creativity and a heaping amount of passion. And these days, she’s using her beloved childhood creations to heat up her career.

Ta is the founder of Sweets by Caroline, a pop-up bakery specializing in gluten-free french macarons, cakes and Asian-inspired desserts. From an early age, she admired her mother’s baking abilities and enjoyed assisting her in making sweet treats for their family. Through the trade, she found a source of stress relief and a desire to continue spreading her love for others by sharing her baked creations.

Fueled by ambition, Ta entered pitch competitions, developing a business model centered around her baking abilities. Encouraged by her feedback and results, she knew she had found the career path she belonged on.

“It gave me confidence, and I thought baking could be a career. I can go somewhere with this,” says Ta.

Upon earning her associate’s degree from Montgomery College, she transferred to the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. There, she added layers to her baking foundation by studying marketing and supply chain management. During that time, Ta found a community of like-minded, driven entrepreneurs through the school’s Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship and its Ladies First Founders program.

She also participated in the Terp Startup Accelerator, an eight-week summer program helping student entrepreneurs progress on their startups. She credits the experience for helping her stay on track with her business goals.

“It was cool to be surrounded by other people that were also into business or having a startup business,” says Ta.

As she continued honing her pitch and baked goods, Ta entered the 2020 Pitch Dingman Competition and reached the final round, winning the $1,000 PPE Award. The following year, she received the Rudy Award for Student Entrepreneur of the Year.

Being an entrepreneur, Ta recognizes that it can “feel like you have to do everything on your own and that you shouldn’t ask for help,” but she encourages others to take advantage of their time at UMD by leveraging its resources and community. Doing so will help build on your strengths and receive support in aspects of business that are less familiar to you, she says.

Since graduating from the Smith School, Ta features her products at various Maryland stores, as well as through pop-up shops, food festivals and her website. In addition to baking, she shares her talent by offering cake decorating classes. Ta also remains active in the Smith School community by participating in its Future Women in Business Conference, a case competition open to all high school women in the tenth through twelfth grades that sees them develop business plans centered around a company.

The most recent conference, held in November 2023, utilized Ta’s company. It was a full-circle moment for Ta, reminiscing on her own journey as an entrepreneur and seeing other young women take their first steps into the business world. Gaining student insights and feedback for her company’s marketing and social media strategies was icing on the cake, she says.

“It was so inspiring to see so many of them in high school, doing their pitches, coming up with marketing plans and financial plans within like an hour, even like 45 minutes,” says Ta. “I always love being able to give back to Smith in any way that I can because that was the place that really catapulted me into my business and really pushed me to be the person that I am today.”