Issue: Autumn 2003

A Genius for Gems

Rubies, emeralds, pavé diamonds, jewels from the Far East, jewels belonging to royalty – such is the stuff of fairy tales, but Lisa Hubbard MA ’76 is happy to call it work. Yes, she knows her baubles and trinkets, but she knows her clientele too. “Asians seem to want perfect color and flawless stones,” she intones with terrific gravitas. “Americans have a great sense of style. They don’t need flawlessness: they just want to wear their pieces regularly. The Europeans, well, they’ve got a tradition of ancestral jewels.”

As executive vice president of international jewelry at Sotheby’s, Hubbard has overseen as well as auctioneered the sales of some of the most coveted jewels in the world. A career high point came in 1987 with the Geneva sale of the estate of the Duchess of Windsor (a.k.a. Wallis Simpson).

“After the war, she became the single most important trend-setter in jewelry,” says Hubbard. “She had money, taste, an interested husband and the time to work with several of the most important 20th-century jewelry designers. Cartier and Van Cleef fashioned jewels for her. Unlike most other women, she had her clothes made as a backdrop for her jewels.”

While Sotheby’s hoped to generate at least $8 million, the sale ultimately netted a record-setting $45 million for the Pasteur Institute and AIDS research, with Hubbard wielding the auctioneer’s gavel. (She also oversaw the 1996 Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis estate sale.)

Hubbard’s brilliant career started with a fascination for the East, having spent five years in India as a child. Her father, USC emeritus president John Hubbard, was then with the U.S. Foreign Aid Program (he later returned as U.S. ambassador to India). Attending Scripps and UC Berkeley as an undergraduate, Lisa Hubbard came to USC for her master’s in international relations. (Sisters Melisse Eidman ’75, MSW ’76 and Kristin JD ’83, likewise, earned USC degrees, and niece Megan Eidman is currently a political science major.)

Even as Hubbard trained for a career in the Far East, she wasn’t at all clear about what she hoped to be doing and for whom. “Sotheby’s had 32 offices then,” she realized. “If I clicked, there was potential to travel.”

And click she did. By 1984, she was traveling regularly to put together jadeite auctions in opening Asian markets. In 1993, she relocated to Hong Kong. Her IR schooling proved beneficial. “At Sotheby’s I had access to people who had lots to do with how their country was doing economically and politically, people who loved to talk politics, not just about how nice that diamond was,” she says.

A hard-nosed international businesswoman Hubbard may well be, but she’s hardly impervious to the dazzling side of her trade. “I get to try on all the jewelry!” she exults. “I mean, wouldn’t you put the crown on your head to see what it looked like? The men working in my department don’t have half the fun the women do.”

– Elizabeth Segal