How to Turn Your Passion into a Thriving Business with Celine Ikeler: If you want to go fast go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

Celine Ikeler started out in Hollywood working in the nascent digital visual effects and animation industry in the late 80’s. She was exposed to entrepreneurs like Barry Sandrew, Ph.D., VFX pioneer at American Film Technologies where she worked on Spielberg’s first digital animated feature, Where Back: A Dinosaur Story and several other animated feature films. She then went to work with Klasky Csupo, an animation studio that took a uniquely different path in both style and creative vision in the creation of the highly successful Real Monsters and Rug Rats franchises. Indeed,  breaking new ground was all Celine knew. From her very first job, she was indoctrinated with an entrepreneurial spirit and innovative mindset.

In 2013  Celine Ikeler decided to venture out on her own. She took her love and passion for baking, her studies in Buddhism, her commitment to veganism and her knowledge in design and merchandising from FIDM to create a unique line of baked goods that were 100% vegan, sugar-free and Glutin free. She spent years focused on R&D because she didn’t want to simply make a wide variety of wholesome Vegan baked goods, she wanted to make each product aesthetically beautiful to look at, and far superior in taste to traditionally baked goods.  

After 7 years of perfecting her craft, Karma Baker was finally born in 2020. After two years in operation, Karma Baker’s success has been nothing short of phenomenal, attracting the likes of Shark Tank’s own Mr. Wonderful, Kevin O’Learly whose team invited Celine to join their highly acclaimed crowdsourcing instrument, StartEngine.  She now ships her Karma Baked product throughout the U.S. and she’s working with Westcliff University’s own Capstone Program to explore a franchise option so she can maximally scale. 

Join Dr. Barry Sandrew as he interviews Celine Ikeler. We’ll discover her textbook entrepreneurial journey… her trials and challenges, her failures and successes… what worked and what didn’t. We’ll all come away inspired by the disruptive vision of this successful startup entrepreneur and perhaps model our own entrepreneurial dreams after the path she carved.