It’s been an amazing 2014 for me, both professionally and personally. The year has been packed with travel, business successes, new initiatives, and some pretty major personal milestones.

Like all past years in this job, 2014 was filled with exciting travel. Vicenza, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Basel, Freiburg, Chicago, San Diego, Las Vegas, ­Tucson, and more were on the itinerary. I had many special moments, like my visit to the opening of Hari Krishna Exports’ new offices in Hong Kong with our ­Mumbai representative, Kaushal Shah. We were honored to be the guests of directors Savji Dholakia and Ghanshyam Dholakia. It was great to meet Paul Rowley, De Beers executive vice president, and fun to run into old ­industry friends like GIA managing director Nirupa Bhatt and GIA’s new senior vice president of global development, Anna Martin. Congrats to Hari Krishna on its spectacular new offices!

Kaushal (c.) and I visiting the new Hari Krishna offices with directors Savji Dholakia (far l.) and Ghanshyam Dholakia (far r.) and De Beers’ Paul Rowley (second from l.)

Back home in New York City, we’ve wrapped up another successful year in print and online advertising in JCK and JCKonline.com. When I began this job, there were five jewelry trades, and despite a publishing industry climate that has seen almost all of them fall by the wayside, JCK continues to thrive. We have some new “tweaks” coming in 2015 that I hope you’ll enjoy. The magazine has never been better written or more visually spectacular, and we’ve once again been nominated for multiple Eddie and Ozzie awards from FOLIO: magazine, the “Oscars” of magazine editorial and design.

JCKonline.com continues to see strong growth in traffic, and our six-day-a-week newsletter now goes out to nearly 20,000 industry execs. We’ve also rolled out the JCK Content Studio, our in-house content marketing division, which has introduced three native advertising campaigns to date, with many more in the 2015 pipeline. Like all native advertising initiatives, these programs are built around content of real interest and value to our readers, so the introduction of these campaigns is truly win-win.

On a personal note, 2014 was my most significant year to date, thanks to my marriage to my husband, Eric, and the birth of our son, Nolen, through surrogacy. It’s truly a Modern Family world we live in, and I couldn’t be more humbled, blessed, and thrilled to be a part of it. The support and friendship of my many industry friends through all of this has made it all the sweeter.

I’m sure I’ll see many of you in early January at the 24 Karat Club black-tie gala. Until then, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!