Founder's Story

She trained the classic way, at Tiffany & Co., building one of the house's top personal-shopping practices client by client. From there she moved into the storied jewelry department at Bergdorf Goodman, where she sharpened the eye for craft and provenance that has defined everything she's done since.

That eye became a specialty: launching brands. When Pomellato wanted its first U.S. store, Josephine built it and beat the brand's own first-year sales goal by half. When Solange Azagury-Partridge, the London jeweler known for its irreverent, sculptural designs, decided to cross the Atlantic, Josephine opened that first U.S. store too, on Madison Avenue, then a second on Rodeo Drive. General manager roles at Ralph Lauren and Prada followed, each one handing her a flagship in one of the country's most competitive retail corridors.

In 2017, Saks Fifth Avenue asked her to do something the company had never done — open a freestanding, multi-brand fine jewelry store. She took The Vault, in Greenwich, from zero to several million dollars in its first year. Today she leads Women's and Fine Jewelry at Richard's, also in Greenwich.

It's that career — a quarter-century spent turning new ideas into stores people love — that led her to build Thanku: a keepsake made the same way she's always worked, by starting with something small and making sure it lasts.