5 Women at the Heart of the Jewelry World

“The earth is so significant, but it gets smaller sized every single working day with all the people today I meet,” said Ms. Gong, 27.

“Ultimately we’re people experts, that is how I like to see it,” she said. “We build trusting associations with our clientele, and we finish up becoming the touch issue for all their needs, cross-group.” In her case, she operates as a expert in gems and as an appraiser, with Uniform Standard of Experienced Appraisal Practice qualifications, and also handles non-public revenue.

Ms. Gong was born in Seattle, moved with her relatives to Beijing when she was 6, then returned to the United States for large college. As a female, she was drawn to the arms-and-armor collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. “Even if it was not regarded jewelry, my initial enjoy in steel crafts was a wearable piece of metal, tied to the functionality of the human body,” she stated.

She graduated from Pratt Institute in New York Town with a Bachelor of Fantastic Arts degree and analyzed at Musashino College in Tokyo, wherever she apprenticed with the Japanese silver learn Hiroshi Suzuki. She also backpacked all around the world, mastering about gem mining in Myanmar, the emerald trade in Colombia and gemstone-reducing in Thailand. “Even if I didn’t devote many years to it,” she stated, the encounter gave her “a much better firsthand comprehending of the course of action in get to discuss about it with additional authority to my clientele.”

In advance of setting up her position at Sotheby’s in early 2019, Ms. Gong labored as a personal jewelry guide and supplier, where by she grew to become acquainted with jewellery pricing and current market motion, subject areas that she stated served her now. “Primarily it’s a market place geared in the direction of a woman purchaser, nevertheless the persons who manage the other side of the field are, in the greater part, males,” she said. “There’s a disconnect with all those on top rated and the product or service offered to the customer, a absence of a dialogue. But ideally in the potential there will be more female executives, dealers and designers.”