Luxury Executive | Jewelry Designer | Ceramicist
ABOUT
I’ve always lived in between things.
East and West. Privilege and marginalization. Head and heart.
Growing up, I often felt like I didn’t quite belong. For a long time, life felt like a series of forced choices — between one version of myself and another. Corporate or creative? Craftsmanship or scale? Luxury or innovation? Tradition or technology? I spent years trying to smooth the tension, to pick a side, to fit neatly into one path.
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I remember learning early on how to tone myself down — to be less expressive, less individualistic, more like everyone else. But the thing about constant assimilation is that it blurs the edges of who you are. Somewhere along the way, I lost touch with what fulfillment felt like on my own terms.
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That realization cracked something open. Since then, I’ve been on a path of unlearning and remembering — experimenting, feeling, exploring, and making. What I’ve uncovered is that I haven’t changed all that much. The things that brought me joy as a child still light me up today.
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I’ve always had an active imagination. As a kid, I invented things like a Kleenex box purse so I could always have tissues on hand. I made jewelry out of anything I could find. When my mother promised me her beautiful cut-glass perfume bottle once it was empty, I dumped it out on the spot — I guess I’ve always been “resourceful,” too.
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Decades later, not much has changed. I build companies, find loopholes, and invest in startups. I still design jewelry and make pretty vessels.
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My bespoke jewelry work is deeply relational — personal collaborations with my clients that transform their stories into talismans and wearable legacies. My ceramics, on the other hand, offer a more intimate, introspective lens: a way to explore identity, heritage, femininity, and the contradictions we all carry. Across both business and art, I find joy in the act of creation.
I’ve come to understand that my path isn’t about choosing one side or tempering the contrast. Transformation exists in the in-between. I no longer seek to resolve the tension. I let it shape me. I create from it.
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I work in the space between intention and surrender, luxury and innovation, minimalism and bold excess. I build teams and companies with heart — and craft pieces that are precise, expressive, a little mischievous, and just a bit wild.
Jean Z. Poh lives and works in New York City. A fourth-generation jewelry professional, her life’s work spans luxury, innovation, and artistry — from founding Swoonery, a multi-brand platform that redefined how fine designer jewelry is discovered, to leading luxury brands through transformation and growth.
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Her work has been recognized by industry leaders, including LVMH Luxury Labs, and featured in Forbes, Financial Times, Robb Report, and more. In 2017, she was named one of Luxury Daily’s “Luxury Women to Watch.”
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Jean’s creative practice extends beyond jewelry into ceramics, which she began at C.R.E.T.A. Rome. Her ceramic work has been exhibited at Salone del Mobile in Milan and featured in 1000 Vases, a curated collection of contemporary global ceramicists.
Jean holds a graduate degree in diamonds from GIA, apprenticed under her father, Zeng Z. Poh, and master goldsmith Leo Genkin, and earned her JD from Cornell Law School and BA from Barnard College. Before forging her own path, she practiced corporate law at Curtis in New York and Morrison Foerster in Shanghai.
