Clockwise from left: David Bonaparte, Sara Yood, Malyia McNaughton, Yianni Melas.
Yianni Melas | CEO, GemExplorer
My guilty pleasure is food. I love cooking as a professional chef, and once a year go to New York City, where I spend a month creating new recipes for well-known restaurants. I have created a secret BBQ sauce with over 100 exotic ingredients, since I love to smoke meats as well as make beef jerky. My crown jewel of a recipe is my eggless cheesecake with black currant. My expertise is Greek fusion recipes like stuffed grape leaves (dolmadakia) with several types of rice — including jasmine both fresh and aged, basmati, and Carolina — with quinoa, vegetables, pine nuts and meat substitutes. I love making homemade mango jams, rice puddings and cinnamon buns.
Apart from cooking, I love raising exotic varieties of banana plants, mango trees, pomegranates, olive trees and dragon fruit. My hobby is roasting my own coffee, distilling Austrian fruit schnapps, and pressing my own olive oil. I’m currently trying to perfect my homemade limoncello liqueur using a variety of Greek organic sweet lemons.
Sara Yood | Deputy general counsel, Jewelers Vigilance Committee (JVC)
I don’t really feel guilty about any of the things I enjoy! But if I had to pick one, every Wednesday evening, I leave the world behind and step into a rehearsal with my classical choir, the New York City Master Chorale. I let the worries of the week fall away as I warm up my voice and focus solely on one thing: the power of blending with those around me, working together to create one sound. Occasionally, I feel a twinge that I should feel guilty about it as a Jew singing choral music primarily from the Christian tradition, but the truth is, I actually don’t feel guilty about it at all.
Malyia McNaughton | Creator, Made by Malyia jewelry collection
My guilty pleasure is clothes shopping, but more specifically, purchasing multiples of the same piece in different colors. When I find something I like, I will purchase it in every variation. I always think to myself that in the event I never find this top or shoe again, I must buy them all.
David Bonaparte | President and CEO, Jewelers of America (JA)
A recent guilty pleasure is binge-watching all of the new shows on Netflix, Apple TV, Prime Video and all the other streaming channels that are producing interesting shows. And it’s grown more intense as Covid-19 has disrupted production of many of my favorites in the past two years, including Ozark, Succession, Yellowstone, Billions, The Crown, The Queen’s Gambit (finished!), The Last Dance (finished!), and more recently Ted Lasso. I find it a great way to relax after watching Jeopardy. It also leads to eating way too much popcorn!
The other not-so-guilty pleasure is playing as much golf as possible. I love being on a beautiful golf course, a place where I have gotten some of my best work done.
Article from the Rapaport Magazine - November 2021. To subscribe click here.