Sweet Dreams

Founder of The Ice Cream & Cookie Co. NATASHA CHIAM proves that passion can be turned into a career opportunity. She tells alethia tiang about life as an entrepreneur

- Alethia Tiang

“I ALWAYS SAY it started with a craving,” says Natasha Chiam when asked how The Ice Cream & Cookie Co. came into being. After all, she first started making ice cream cookies as a fun weekend activity.

A law graduate, she was at the time a beauty writer for Female magazine, who despite relishing the writer’s craft — “I’d always enjoyed it and was pretty decent at it” — had a passion for making and selling her ice cream cookie sandwiches at small farmers’ markets or events in her spare time. But as her name got out and more orders started flowing in, Chiam decided to leave journalism and venture down the entrepreneurial path instead. “Had I not started my own business [in 2012], I’d definitely still be in that profession,” she tells me. “I left when I could no longer fulfil both roles to a level that I was satisfied with.”