As this CEO heads to Yale, her cookie biz continues

Nia Froome, cookie CEO, will become Nia Froome, Yale freshman, this fall.

But the 18-year-old from North Valley Stream will still be in the business of making cookies -- from her dorm room on the campus in New Haven, Conn.

Froome, who last fall won the prestigious 2010 Oppenheimer Funds / National Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge Award, beating out 28 finalists for her work starting Mamma Nia's Vegan Bakery -- an online business she launched from her home -- said last week that she will combine college work with her business, at least part-time. She is teaching her mom, Dawn Froome, and other family members, to bake.

"I'll still do the managerial stuff" from the dorm, said Nia, who graduated from Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn in the spring.

That "stuff" involves keeping track of orders and coordinating with a commercial bakery she uses in the Bronx. Her business has two bake dates a month, typically consisting of 10 to 25 orders, or some 300 to 400 cookies, all made without butter, milk or eggs. The business is profitable, Nia said, although there may be only one bake day a month beginning in the fall.

Her mother, administrator at the dean's office at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, said, "We [family members] are in training so we can keep the business going and hold it down while she's away. We're learning."

Nia and some of the other Oppenheimer Funds winners met with President Barack Obama in the fall. Nia said she brought the president some cookies as a gift.

"But the Secret Service had to take them away, and they had to be tested," Nia said. She never did learn whether the president tasted the delights.