Laura's Story

I came to America in my twenties, from the former USSR, because my family wanted a better life. I arrived with almost nothing and did what immigrants do — I worked.

I trained as a nurse. My husband and I raised our family. But the thing I had always wanted to be was an artist, and that doesn't leave you. After the long shifts, when the house was finally quiet, I would sit at the kitchen table and draw. The drawings kept turning into jewelry.

My first years in the trade were spent working alongside my brother Jacob at Diamond Quasar — the house the world now knows as Jacob & Co. I learned New York's Diamond District the only way you really can: from the inside, stone by stone, bench by bench.

And then I did the thing that women like me were not expected to do in that industry, in those years. I opened my own company. Coming from where I came from, a woman running her own business was the whole American dream in one sentence.

“What I hold most closely is that I get to help my clients create precious memories. Thirty years later, I’m still greeting old and new clients in midtown Manhattan, in the heart of the city.” — Laura