I'm insatiably curious about how beautiful things are made.

I am insatiably curious about how beautiful things are made. That curiosity has shaped every part of my life: a career spent exploring how people and organizations thrive, a craft devoted to studying the ways goldsmiths have practiced their art for centuries, and a life shared with a partner who understands and shares that joyful, restless need to keep learning and exploring.

I was born in Lisbon, Portugal, and spent part of my childhood moving between countries as my father’s international career carried our family abroad. That early experience left me with a lasting sense that the world is wide, layered, and worth exploring. I returned to the United States for college and built a life I was proud of. Along the way, I met an extraordinary man, Rob, and together we became something even better. He is my partner in every sense: an engineer to my scientist, endlessly curious, always ready for the next adventure, and genuinely delighted by whatever I am inspired to learn next.

For twenty-five years I lived with discipline and purpose — raising children, building a career, saving carefully, and planning intentionally for a future I could only partly imagine. Those years were full of living — great moments, adventures, and a partnership that kept the long view in sight even while I was deeply present in the day to day. Now, in my early fifties, I find myself with something rare: a blank slate, good health, and the freedom to design whatever comes next. Looking back, I know it was all intentional — every year quietly building toward this: the chance to travel, to experience life more fully, and to finally give my hands the work they were always reaching for.

That work is jewelry — and I approach the making of it the same way I move through life — drawn first by beauty, then pulled deeper by the desire to understand how it comes to be. I design and fabricate pieces by hand, working in silver and gold, with stones and enamel, each one built around a technique I am learning to master. Again and again I find myself curious about the methods that are most demanding to learn. Granulation. Filigree. Enameling. I am not a master of these traditions but a devoted student of them — always chasing the moment when patience and practice finally make a difficult thing possible.

This October I head to Athens as a Jewelry Artist in Residence at the Ilias Lalaounis Jewelry Museum, immersed in a new tradition, a new culture, and a new chapter of making. After that, Argentina. Chile. Wherever curiosity leads.

Something remarkable is just beginning.