Tell us about how you came to the jewelry industry.

My original career choice as a teenager was to join the Royal Air Force, but back in the late 70’s there was no such thing as corrective vision, and if your eyesight wasn’t up to scratch then you were out of luck. I ended up doing research into industrial ceramics for Morgan Crucible and while there applied for a lab tech job at Johnson Matthey in Birmingham, UK. I got the job and the rest is history. I ended up concentrating on precious metals and found I was good at it.

What attracted you to help launch TJS?

I’d been attending the Santa Fe Symposium every year since 1997, so that’s 25 symposia. The opportunity to help craft a new forum to disseminate knowledge in a similar way to SFS was too good to pass up when I was nominated. As a collective we can’t lose this type of forum and we all need to make it happen. From board members to sponsors to attendees, we all have a part to play.