Lia Brassard
Office of Admission

Lia Brassord is a Smith alumna – class of ’83 – and currently serves as Senior Assistant Director in Smith’s Office of Admission, where she has worked for over 20 years. Outside of work, Lia’s interests include going to any Broadway show she can manage, running, trotting around NYC with her (adult) kids, reading – she does a lot of reading – and playing Bridge.

Lia’s real passion, though, is baking. She started baking at age 5. Interestingly, neither her mother nor grandmother were big bakers – she just discovered it on her own. She has always found baking to be relaxing, perhaps because she is a rule follower by nature, and baking is all about following the rules. She also has a strong sweet tooth, and baking, well…. Lia’s favorite thing to bake is chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. She has five favorite chocolate cake recipes that she rotates, including the famous -at least in the Office of Admission – Wellesley Fudge Cake.

Lia had ample opportunity as a child to practice her passion. As the third of eight children she had plenty of hungry siblings to benefit from her endeavors, especially since five of the first six children were boys and they were all athletes with enormous appetites. “Cookies were eaten straight from the oven – I don’t recall ever putting them on plates!”

Lia notes that she does not bake for show and she is not a photographer, so her photographs don’t make her goodies look amazing. They do, however, represent some of the baking Lia did during the initial months of quarantine. In fact, in the beginning, she was baking six days a week. After about eight weeks of that, though, she cut that back to only three baking days a week.

And just in case you were wondering, Lia did have help eating all those quarantine baked goods. During quarantine, much to her delight, two of her three adult children, who normally live and work in New York City, decided to move back home with her to avoid the stress and isolation of living through COVID alone in apartments in the city. Eventually, though, they got sick of the baked goods. And, when they returned to the city, they joked with her that they were looking forward to “detoxing” from all the sugar.