Natalie Clifton has been baking nearly her whole life. It started in high school, turning out cookies and brownies for friends over the holidays and signing up for every home economics and culinary class she could. Her grandfather, who she was close to growing up, taught her the basics and handed her the kitchen whenever she wanted to practice or invent something new. In college, sorting out what to do with her life, she found her school’s culinary program and graduated with an associate of science in culinary arts and baking and pastry. The pastry side was always the passion. She’s worked in bakeries professionally for almost 15 years, the last of them at Macrina, where she joined in 2024 as quality assurance general manager.

Natalie grew up in Orange County, California, where she met her husband in high school and where both of her daughters were born. Her father had moved to Olympia around the time her oldest was born, and a visit when the baby was about a year old left the family taken with Washington. A few years later, looking for a role outside California, she was offered an opportunity in Seattle. With her dad nearby to help scout neighborhoods, they made the move in October 2018 and haven’t looked back.

As quality assurance general manager, Natalie works alongside the other GMs to keep product quality and consistency high across the board, from the Macrina cafes to the wholesale accounts. Much of her focus is on day-to-day operations and on building the processes that will carry the bakery through its next stretch of growth, in customers and in what’s on offer. It’s a job that touches everything. She works with teams across the company and sees the full arc of a product, from raw ingredient to packaged goods. Macrina is always improving and growing, she says, and she gets to work at the center of it, developing new products, sharpening existing processes and helping roll out new systems across the production floor.

Macrina is unlike any bakery she’s worked in. The range of products keeps all kinds of customers happy, and the people, in her experience, genuinely care about the product, about each other, and about what they do every day. She’s noticed that whenever she mentions where she works, the reaction is the same: real, unprompted excitement. “I’m excited to work somewhere that makes such an impact on its communities, customers and employees,” she says.

Natalie lives in Puyallup with her husband, Bryan, to whom she’s been married 16 years, and their two girls, Stella and Layla. The household also includes a cat named Elvis and a dog named Cupcake. They spend whatever time they can near the water, and at home they cook, bake and garden together.

Erica Moscal started at Macrina in August 2021 as an overnight delivery packer, arriving at 9 each evening to bag bread for the morning drivers. It was her first job. She’d always loved to cook and bake at home, and that’s what drew her to apply at a bakery. The work suited her. Within a year she was promoted to lead, stepping into a supervisory role. A year after that, in July 2023, she became assistant manager. And in June 2025, she was promoted again, this time to general manager of the delivery department. 

Today Erica oversees a team of 46: 30 drivers, 10 packers, four shift leads and an assistant manager. She also runs a fleet of 25 vehicles. Her day starts at 3 a.m., though she’s available to her team at all hours. She likes to check in with the early shift first, then work through schedules, reviews and documentation while staying on call for drivers out on route. She greets them as they return and helps sort out whatever came up along the way. In between, she’s packing orders for extra deliveries, coordinating those runs, working with other department heads and scheduling vehicle maintenance. Sometimes she handles that maintenance herself. 

What keeps her challenged is that no two days are the same. “While I might see similar challenges, it’s almost never the same problem,” she says. She likes solving them, and she likes watching her team hit its goals. Since stepping into the GM role, she’s opened two new routes. She counts the arrival of electric vehicles among the best changes around the bakery. They’ve eased the load on the gas vans in the stop-and-go of Seattle delivery. 

Erica’s favorite thing about Macrina is how the company invests in its people. “I started as a packer and four years later, I’m the GM,” she says. “I don’t think very many places give you that kind of chance.” She credits her mentor, Fanny Alvarado, with seeing her worth and giving her the opportunity. In 2024, she won the company’s Core Value award for Continuously Improving. 

Born and raised in Renton, Erica now lives in Kent with her two dogs, a corgi and a golden retriever. She spends her time off with them, walking, training and bringing them along to visit family. When she gets the chance, she likes to catch a Mariners game.

Erik Carlsen joined Macrina in the late summer of 2021 as a customer service representative. Before long he was pitching in across the bakery, with stints in a few departments, including accounts receivable. In 2023 he moved into sales, and in 2024 he was promoted to general manager. He’d come to Macrina from Supervalu/UNFI, where he spent a few years, first in the warehouse and later in charge of refrigerated cargo.

Today Erik is the wholesale sales general manager. He handles relationships with the bakery’s top 50 customers, onboards new accounts and looks for new business. The sales team, as he puts it, is small but mighty. He and his assistant manager, Ryan, make up the entire boots-on-the-ground crew.

Erik gets to the bakery around 6 a.m. He checks in with the delivery, office, accounts receivable and production teams before touching base with Ryan. Once he’s through his inbox, he hits the road between 8 and 9, visiting existing customers and meeting with new and prospective accounts. He’s usually off the road by noon or 1, when he recaps the day for the team, plans the days and weeks ahead and answers whatever’s left in the inbox.

What he enjoys most is the unpredictability. “You can plan as much as you’d like, but each day unfolds in a fun and unpredictable way,” he says. The constant momentum and the travel keep the days exciting. The work has grown a lot since he started. The bakery has expanded its delivery range to reach Lake Stevens, Lakewood and Port Gamble, onboarded hundreds of new accounts and added fresh pizza dough and a range of custom products. He’s proud of how the team keeps reaching for better products and better service.

His favorite thing about Macrina is what happens when something goes wrong. “Whenever an issue arises everyone from every team jumps on it,” he says, which means most problems get solved before a customer ever notices. What sets the place apart, he adds, is the transparency. If you have a question, you know who to ask, and you feel free to ask it.

Born and raised in Tacoma, Erik spent a couple of years in Seattle before settling back in Tacoma’s North End. He loves Puget Sound and gets to travel around it for work. In his free time he plays bass, goes to shows, reads, writes, watches movies, exercises and cooks.