Columbia College Today

Sonya Cho Hong '91, owner and designer for Butterfly Cakes, a specialty cake shop in Burlingame, Calif., shows off one of her creations.

PHOTO: WENDY MACLAURIN RICHARDSON

After law school, two bar exams and seven years of private practice, Sonya Cho Hong ’91 decided it was time for a change. Now she is thriving creating specialty cakes.

Hong owns and is the cake designer of Butterfly Cakes, a boutique cake studio in Burlingame, Calif., that specializes in skillfully handcrafted creations. Since opening in 2002, Butterfly Cakes has become a well-known success in the San Francisco area, featured in the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Magazine and on local television.

“Finding a career you love is one of the hardest things to do,” says Hong. “I realized what I really love doing is working with my hands and creating beautiful and delicious products for people to consume.”

Hong, who grew up in a small town in New Jersey, graduated with a B.A. in East Asian studies. “The energy, the diversity and the excitement of Columbia and New York were intoxicating,” she says. “Being surrounded by such a dynamic student body — bright, interesting and diverse — was a tremendous experience that has shaped me well in adulthood.”

Hong continued her education at NYU Law, completing her studies there in 1994 and going on to practice at Simpson Thacher in New York City. At the firm, however, Hong began to question her career choice. “I remember thinking to myself, ‘Is this it? Is this what I’ll be doing for the rest of my life?’ I had worked so hard to get there and it felt like an ‘important’ job, but I couldn’t fathom the idea of doing that type of work day in, day out for the next 30 years,” Hong says. She left the firm and spent a number of years in banking, contemplating business school and checking out other corporate job opportunities.

Hong moved to San Francisco in 1998, after getting engaged to David Hong ’92, who is from Hawaii. “David didn’t like NYC life, and San Francisco was the only other city we could agree upon!” she says, also noting, “I knew law wasn’t for me, but decided to give it one more try in California.”

Hong took her second bar exam in California and worked for a San Francisco firm, Hanson Bridgett. In San Francisco, Hong found the practice of law “much more humane, manageable and enjoyable than in New York.” The change of cities was a positive shift, but Hong found herself bitten by the entrepreneurial bug. Combining her interests in crafts and baking with some practicality, she decided to pursue wedding cake design. “Brides are going to buy a wedding cake; it’s just a question of where they are going to buy it,” Hong, an avid cook and baker, explains.

She enrolled in the California Culinary Academy while working full-time at the law firm and working part-time for a bakery. In 2002, Hong quit her job at the law firm to devote her full attention to Butterfly Cakes (www.butterflycakes.com).

The transition was not easy. While impressed with her success now, Hong’s parents were baffled by her decision. And not having any connections with the wedding or baking industries, Hong had to work from the ground up. “I had to educate myself on everything from learning the trade and craft to finding suppliers to meeting others in the industry,” says Hong. She found the support she needed in her husband, her de facto business partner.

Hong says she enjoys managing her own business and connecting with people individually. “As a lawyer, I felt my personality was stifled because there were so few opportunities to use interpersonal skills,” she says. “I realized that connecting with people, gaining their trust and executing and delivering above and beyond what was expected are the keys to a successful business.”

Hong’s plans are to stay small and hopefully share her craft through books and television. While often urged by others to expand her business with stores in Los Angeles or New York, Hong prefers running her San Francisco shop. “I am at heart a craftsperson and I realize that to expand would mean that I would become a manager of people, taking me further and further from my craft,” she explains.

While she has shifted careers, Hong still uses her formal education. “Although my culinary education is important,” Hong notes, “my undergraduate and legal education have proven invaluable to managing a business. Careers for Columbia graduates aren’t limited to medicine, law or banking — there is a whole world of exciting career opportunities. One simply needs to have the courage to discover it.”

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Leaving Law Was a Piece of Cake for Sonya Cho Hong ’91