Ms. Ali Pastorini, Senior Vice President of the Panama Diamond Exchange (PDE), was unanimously elected in October 2016 by the group to serve as first president of Mujeres Brillantes, The association tries to help women in the jewellery and watch industries to advance and develop professionally through networking, education and leadership development.

Within a span of 4-5 months, she has been receiving overwhelming response from the global trade circle for her latest initiative. Here, Ms. Ali Pastorini, who herself is a woman entrepreneur  pens her views exclusively for G2J about her vision, plans and progress of the Mujeres Brilliantes. 

When the idea of women’s jewelers from Latin America came to my mind I couldn’t ever imagine the good reception from most people in our industry, people ask me how and why it became so popular in few months. The truth is that there are a variety of reasons but the most important is that maybe women in general understood that if we do not get united to change the current scenario it will never change.

Our formula is very simple but yet not used appropriately in our industry, which is communication.

For we claim for a changing we must prepare those women giving the correct tools to succeed and consequently feel confident enough to become leaders or an influential person. To become a leader is not an easy task, you need a lot of skills to manage a team and get good results, the way how we prepare the Mujeres Brillantes is through education with Seminars, information, trunk shows and constantly talk where we give precious tips and I am not saying tips of gemology (which is also very important), I am saying about teach their position in this world not only as a designer or a businesswoman but as somebody who  can really change the history.

Is not only about educating the members of Mujeres Brillantes, is about educating the companies, the associations and the society itself. For this reason, we work in partnership with a few Latin American Associations and World Jewelry Shows because we understand that only when you work as a Group with all relevant entities involved we start to see women in the leadership as a common thing. We must change all the structure and consequently we change the mentality. Maybe this is the biggest challenge that an aspiring woman is facing these days, she understands her position in the world and how she can contribute and that’s exactly the moment where we work with each one bringing their best for the group.

Is not only about an Association where you become member and wait for our activities, is a group where everyone must be active for things work well, the idea is everybody should feel useful and create a synergy to empower women.

We do not try to put the idea that this is a male dominated business, although it is, but what we try is participate in events, discuss important issues, debate in our Youtube Channel where at some point instead of the viewers look at us as a bunch of women, they look simply as business people giving tips in each video or event. In our videos that are in Spanish, Portuguese and English at any moment we criticize the men, on the contrary we have men who have joined our videos, we share our experiences, what worked for me maybe works for you, taxes, laws, education in every country to at end we evaluate as a group how we can work for the changing.

For 2017 we already have partners working and scheduling with us Business Meetings around Latin America, Trunk Shows, International Fairs and new subjects for the Channel. The Mujeres Brillantes initiative is a door for the women become better professionals, more prepared for the market, express their opinion and more important feel proud of themselves.

Challenges always do exist but if we work in the same page for the benefit of every woman in the industry I do not have doubt we can make it. Mujeres Brillantes do not come with the formula of solving all the problems that the industry face it these days, we come to change the mentality and then together (men and women) find the formula of solve the industry’s challenges.