Lisa Esperame-Nohs lifts shroud over fabled Diamond District
Lisa with husband Thomas, who works as an IT director for a Manhattan law firm. The Long Island couple has five children and seven grandchildren.
Antwerp, Tel-Aviv and New York City are the world’s diamond capitals. Lisa Esperame-Nohs’s work as a jewelry manager makes her an important member of the elite world of Manhattan’s fabled Diamond District.
It is a world Lisa knows intimately. She is the manager of the Jewelry Department at William Goldberg, one of the pioneer jewelry retailers in New York. Goldberg jewelry pieces are sold in prestigious jewelry stores worldwide socialites and celebrities are known to frequent. They’re not something we find at Macy’s.
For almost eight years now, Lisa has been at the helm of William Goldberg’s quality control unit, making sure “girl’s best friend” is impeccably manufactured from conceptualization, design and all the way to pricing. She and several hundreds of Filipinos call the Diamond District “office.” It’s where they work as managers, designers, computer programmers or technical writers and make it one tightly run enclave.
She joined William Goldberg in 2005 when the 50-year-old company had made the big leap from buy-and-sell trading to manufacturing its entire selection of products.
“They’ve always been a diamond company, they mine diamonds and then they ventured into making their own,” explained Lisa in an interview with The FilAm. “That’s when I came in. They were looking for someone to organize their jewelry department.”
As manager, Lisa introduced, for example, the use of laser tags and automated jewelry cards replacing handwritten labels. “This, to make things faster and more efficient.”
There was jewelry training in Lisa’s background. She apprenticed at her mother’s jewelry store-pawnshop in Farmers Market in Cubao as a young girl barely in high school. Instead of being out with friends, Lisa and her sisters staffed the counter and assisted customers. There, she developed an appreciation for jewelry and an eye for identifying stones.
“I hated working there. Walang suweldo,” she said with a laugh as she looked back on those days she was being initiated into the trade. Today, she is grateful to her mother for paving the way.
One of her sisters went on to become an accomplished gemologist. In the 1980s, Lucille Esperame-Bocobo set up the first diamond appraising school in the country, GemLab Philippines, whose standards are patterned after those of the Gemological Institute of America (GIA). Lucille attended GIA, graduating with honors.
Lisa moved to New York in 2002, a young widow with two school-age children. With business sense and work ethics acquired from her mother and older sister, she found work with a medium-size jewelry company. She left after three years to join the illustrious William Goldberg company. She never got the chance to meet the man, but his legend lives as New York’s 48th Street, where the office is located, is named William Goldberg Way.
Actress Reese Witherspoon (with then fiancé Jim Toth) wears her engagement ring of flawless Ashoka Diamond handcrafted exclusively by William Goldberg. The Ashoka Diamond is said to be one of the most coveted stones in the world.
The Diamond District comprises two streets intersecting three avenues in Manhattan’s theater district. Lisa’s office on 48th and Fifth is two short blocks away from the Philippine Consulate building on 46th and Fifth. Wedged close to the Rockefeller Center and the Radio City Music Hall are a succession of jewelry stores that do retail and wholesale businesses, reminiscent of the congested hive of shoes stores in Marikina.
“Bakit ganun, tabi tabi?” she wondered the first time she visited. “Won’t this make competition difficult?” She realized how the competition is actually healthy for consumers because it makes them check out several stores before choosing the best one that would supply their needs.
Filipinos are valued workers in the Diamond District, said Lisa. “We are known as hardworking and trustworthy. We don’t complain and we don’t give people a hard time,” she said. “We just work and we get the job done.”
Trust is a benchmark, especially in a district where large volumes of cash change hands on a daily basis. Strict background checks are part of the hiring process. “Trust is the name of the game,” she said.
Part of her work as jewelry manager requires trying on some newly crafted pieces to see how they look when worn.
“I have to make sure to try them on. Some weigh heavily or don’t lay right. I do it with other women at work,” she said, stressing they do not wear the jewelry outside of the office. One of Lisa’s best features is her slender swan-like neck, perfect for a diamond-studded triple row or a wreath necklace.
“Diamond is definitely my favorite stone,” she said, adoring its beauty and rarity as a gemstone. “I get the best of both worlds because I don’t have to spend millions to wear expensive jewelry but I’m privileged to wear first-hand those million dollar ‘bling bling’ you see A-list celebrities wear on the red carpet.”
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