Magdalena (born in 1953) ran El Piano, a vegan and gluten free restaurant in Grape Lane, York. Magdalena obtained her Philosophy at York in the late 1970s. Not long after, she became a founder member of the Gillygate Wholefood Bakery, which then moved to Millers Yard, Gillygate in 1982. She moved to West Yorkshire and began working with the European Commission. She made use of her language and management skills to prepare and co-ordinate funding proposals, manage transnational projects and implement IT strategies for “structural funding areas in the UK, Greece, Norway, and Spain”.