This Northeastern grad went from neuroscience major to the head of her own cookie company

By Erin Kayata March 24, 2025
Red bags of cookies, with cookies spilling out of them onto a yellow lightly checkered background.

Everyone has a different way to relieve stress. For Maura Duggan, it was baking.

But not everyone’s stress-relieving hobby blossoms into a full-on business as it did for Duggan. What started as a side hustle turned into Fancypants Baking Co., which just celebrated 21 years in business with an expansion into Costco.

“This is an unbelievable opportunity,” Duggan said. “We’re hoping we do great and that continues to propel things forward.”

The path to running her own baking company was not linear. Duggan came to Northeastern University to study neuroscience as part of what was then a new program.

Read more from Northeastern Global News.

Courtesy photo

Sign up for CONNECTS.

The College of Science newsletter delivered straight to your inbox.

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.