Roanna grew up on a cattle ranch in rural Utah and her family is Greek immigrants (her grandmother claims she grew up in a restaurant kitchen). But the truth was Roanna was not a very good baker until she taught herself to bake gluten free.

Fascinated with travel, between the years of 18-30 she had traveled to more than 30 countries and had worked as a leadership consultant on several continents. She holds a Master’s Degree in Organizational Leadership as well as an MBA in Entrepreneurship, and for 10 years served as a global leadership consultant, and taught leadership at the graduate level. While she was living in Rome, Italy, she met Annabel Cohen, and the two became instant friends, bonding over their dreams of working in pastry.
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When her toddler son was diagnosed with multiple food allergies, she began to notice the difficulties of finding good tasting food for him.
While living in Italy, she studied cooking, baking, chocolate making, and gelato from a culture that places the highest value on food quality, freshness, taste, and appearance.

In 2015, she opened The Gluten Free Baking Co. with a cottage food license to bake for wholesale clients out of her home kitchen. With no formal kitchen training, she became a self made gluten free pastry chef. Her unique ability to see patterns in information is the basis of her ability to create gluten free recipes.

In 2018, she acquired Euro Pastry, a 2400 sq. foot European style bakery that only served wholesale clients. She subsequently turned the entire bakery gluten free, and not only did she not lose any of the existing wholesale clients, she gained more. Her first two years were spent honing recipes and processes for a successful wholesale business.

At the end of 2019, she was featured with her celiac friend Lisa Altfest on Netflix Sugar Rush, being the first ever gluten free participants on the show. They placed 2nd!

The buzz pushed her to open a retail shop on Feb 8, 2020. The retail shop was wildly successful, touted as one of San Diego’s most anticipated openings of 2020, and there was constantly a line around the block. A mere 5 weeks later, Roanna lost her entire wholesale business when the world was rocked by Covid. So, she spent the next 2 years learning and perfecting retail—a business she knew nothing of. When the world began to return to “normal” she successfully put together a wholesale a retail business, opening her second retail location in 2022.  Currently there is just one retail shop in Clairemont at the baking facility.  Roanna has also opened The Gluten Free Culinary School.  The courses are all online and designed to equip and train individuals to open their own GF bakeries across the US. 

Her goal is to create a new world of delicious foods that help transform the food industry into a safe place for allergen diners.