Pearls As One (PAO) Student Focus — pearl jewelry

Pearls As One Student Focus: Hope Estella Waggoner, Pearl Lover & Student Hope Estella Waggoner’s passion for the humanities and the beauty of nature helped define her love of precious gemstones, including pearls. But it was an ad from the Tahitian government in her social media feed that led the mother and native Texan to the Pearls As One (PAO) course, where she quickly took up Tahiti’s grant offer to study cultured pearls. “Learning about pearls has been a mind-opening experience for me,” says Waggoner. PAO made the knowledge and history of cultured pearls accessible to a wide range of students, and...

Ruth Johnson may work in insurance, but her love of pearls and fine jewelry led her to become an industry insider and Pearls As One student (PAO). Johnson has long been a member of the online forum Pearl Guide, and after attending several private Ruckus events for pearl lovers, she became fast friends with the CPAA’s own Douglas McLaurin (a founder of Perlas Del Mar de Cortez, the Sea of Cortez pearl brand), Sarah Canizzaro of Kojima Pearl, and Josh Humbert and Celeste Brash of Kamoka Pearl. It was through her involvement in Pearl Guide that she learned of PAO,...