Every issue of The Main Course, ICE’s school newsletter, includes a look at the career of one of our alumni finding success in the industry. In the most recent issue, Editor Kiri Tannenbaum looked at the career of food media star Sarah Copeland who graduated from ICE’s Culinary Arts program in 2002. We’re sharing the profile here on DICED.

It wasn’t until this Rockford, Illinois native discovered the amazing restaurants in New York City, that she realized food could also be an art form. Though dining was a hobby, Sarah Copeland didn’t necessarily believe it would later become her career. As a journalist she landed a job first at Glamour and later at O the Oprah Magazine and soon after she began taking a few recreational classes in the evenings at ICE. Eventually, her passion for food got the best of her and she left her job in publishing and entered ICE’s professional program in 2001. It was on to France in 2002 where she staged at several three and four-star Michelin restaurants. More…

Whether as restaurant chefs, chocolate makers, bread bakers or food writers, ICE alumni are finding success in a variety of different avenues in the food world. Check out just some of the alumni finding success and making recent headlines.

* Dave Crofton (Pastry & Baking Arts ’03) and his wife Dawn Casale, the owners of One Girl Cookies were profiled in the Winter 2012 issue of Edible Brooklyn.

*Master butcher Ryan Farr (Culinary ’10) just appeared on the Martha Show, in conjunction with the publication of his new book, Whole Beast Butchery.

*Recipe developer and blogger Sarah Copeland’s (Culinary ’02) first book, The Newlywed Cookbook, was released at the end of December.

* Marissa Goldberg (Culinary ’08) wrote an article in SELF magazine on healthy holiday trifles.

* Dori Fern (Culinary ’11) won the recent Edible Brooklyn Latke Recipe Contest, and then competed against 15 chefs at BAM on December 19 in the 2nd Annual Latke Festival.

* Peter Shelsky (Culinary ’02), and his business Shelsky’s Smoked Fish, were featured in a New York Times piece on the re-surging popularity of herring.

To connect with these ICE alumni and many more, join ICE’s network on LinkedIn, or follow ICE on Facebook and Twitter.

When ICE President Rick Smilow and Anne E. McBride wrote Culinary Careers: How to Get Your Dream Job in Food they discovered a plethora of food jobs they had never heard of before. Since the book’s release, they have been discovering even more interesting career paths in the food world. DICED shares some of them with you in a reoccurring feature, “Unique Culinary Careers.”

ICE alum Allison Fishman is the author of the new book, You Can Trust a Skinny Cook. After graduating from ICE, she went on to work in test kitchens at Saveur, Martha Stewart and Food Network. She has also worked in TV and graduated from NYU’s food studies program. Her classes at ICE focus on healthy, delicious cooking using simple techniques. Fishman says, “It can be a bit confusing, this hodge podge food career. My dad is always trying to explain what I do in one sentence, but it doesn’t work that way. When you come down to it, I cook at home, write about home cooking, take pictures of food and teach others how to cook. I guess that’s my sentence.” We asked her to tell us some more about her career and the process of writing a cook book and working as a teacher in the industry.

What has your career path been like?
When I met with ICE Admissions Rep Linda Simon in 2001, prior to enrolling at ICE (then Peter Kump’s), she asked me why I wanted to go to culinary school. I told her that I was a terrible cook and I had no kitchen confidence, and many of my friends felt the same way. We were well educated, moving up in the corporate world, but had no idea what to do when it came to the kitchen. I knew there were a lot of women out there like me, and I wanted to help my generation become comfortable in the kitchen, and have fun doing it.

When I graduated, I went to work in the test kitchens that home cooks turned to, like Saveur, Martha Stewart and Food Network. I wanted to be a part of the kitchens were setting the tone for home cooking in America. As I worked in these kitchens, I was teaching in people’s home kitchens. This was the key part — the home kitchen is where the knife meets the cutting board, or more accurately the garlic meets the press. I taught, but I learned far more. I observed what home cooks needed and wanted. More…