About Us
Glowing Constellation is the result of a true partnership, personal and professional, between Erika Santonastaso and Gaetano Santonastaso, combining complementary skills to create digital products with purpose.
Together, we bring the worlds of baking, product management, and technology into a single solution designed to support bakers in their everyday work. What began as an academic idea and a personal passion has grown into a product built with care, resilience, and deep respect for the baking community.
We believe the best products are born when lived experience meets thoughtful design, and Glowing Constellation is exactly that.
Erika Santonastaso — CEO & Co-Founder
I'm Erika Santonastaso, a baker and product leader with over 20 years of experience driving digital innovation for global brands. LinkedIn
Baking entered my life during a period of personal darkness and revealed a talent I never knew I had. What began as a source of healing soon became a business, this is how Glowing Constellation - Cakes was born, a space where creativity, resilience, and discipline coexisted.
While completing my postgraduate degree in Product Management at King's College London, I found myself juggling professional product work with the realities of running a small baking business. It was during this time that I became acutely aware of how much unpaid and invisible labour bakers take on: scaling recipes, calculating ingredient quantities, pricing products, estimating costs, and managing admin.
This realisation became the foundation of my postgraduate research, which received a distinction, and ultimately sparked the idea for this app. By combining my hands-on baking experience with strong product thinking, my goal is to create tools that genuinely support bakers, allowing them to spend less time on spreadsheets and more time doing what they love.
Glowing Constellation exists because moments of darkness can lead to extraordinary light.
Gaetano Santonastaso — CTO & Co-Founder
I'm Gaetano Santonastaso, co-founder of Glowing Constellation, Erika's husband and a seasoned Software engineer with strong Technical experience in Product Development. LinkedIn
I bring a strong technical and problem-solving mindset, with a passion for turning ideas into real, working products. From the earliest stages, I believed this concept deserved more than a dissertation chapter, it deserved to exist in the real world and make a difference.
My role in Glowing Constellation is to help transform vision into reality: supporting the product's technical development, structure, and scalability, while ensuring it remains practical, reliable, and user-focused.
Working alongside Erika, I'm proud to help build a product that supports bakers not just as creators, but as business owners, giving them tools that respect their time, effort, and passion.
Glowing Constellation is built by bakers, for bakers: combining lived experience with thoughtful product design.
Why The Name 'Glowing Constellation'?
Because… "The stars don't shine, they burn." (Unknown)
It was in that moment of darkness that Erika discovered a hidden talent she never knew she had, baking. Her resilience guided her towards a new path in her life, one that began to shine so brightly that turned it into a business.
Every baker has a story, every baker is a star and together, we are a Glowing Constellation.