Mahnaz Ispahani Bartos has been an entrepreneur, scholar, author, foreign policy, and philanthropy professional as well as a women’s rights advocate. She is the founder and CEO of MAHNAZ COLLECTION, which opened in 2012, New York’s premier, female-run, gallery for modern, vintage, designer, and artist jewelry. The company is both a sales and knowledge portal. It not only buys and sells jewelry, but equally, it conducts original research, publishing educational catalogs and mounting museum-quality exhibitions. Mahnaz’s scholarly background and inquisitive approach is reflected in the high standards used to acquire, curate, and place unusual jewelry both in private and public collections. The gallery showcases collectible original, beautifully crafted, often handmade, work from independent designers, studio jewelers, artists, and select heritage houses. The gallery highlights lost or underrecognized masters and celebrates the work of women makers. Importantly, by selling vintage jewelry, MAHNAZ COLLECTION promotes reuse and supports sustainability.

Prior to starting the gallery, Mahnaz spent over twenty-five years as an international policy professional. She served for a decade as a Program Executive at the Ford Foundation, directing the American Foreign Policy program, and started two vital initiatives to promote the rights of women in religious and cultural contexts, and in peace and security. She has been a Senior Fellow for South and Central Asia and remains a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She has also been a Fellow at the Belfer Center, Harvard University, and The Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian. She has served as an advisor and consultant to many institutions including the Carnegie Corporation, the Luce Foundation, the Open Society Institute, and the Asia Society. She led the local government reform initiatives in the former Soviet Union for the National Democratic Institute (NDI) during 1990 to 1992 and led or served on international election observer missions in Eastern Europe and Pakistan. She was Foreign Affairs aide to NDI Chair, former VP, Walter Mondale. She is a widely published author of books, essays, refereed and magazine articles, and op-eds on international security and politics as well as literary works.

Since 2003, Dr. Ispahani Bartos has been a Trustee of the New York Public Library, serving on its Executive Committee, and chairing working committees and fundraising events. For three years, she was a Commissioner for Public Design for New York City, representing the NYPL. In 2021, she became a Trustee of Lincoln Center. She has previously served as Trustee for, among others, Wellesley College, her alma mater. She received her B.A., Phi Beta Kappa, from Wellesley College and her M.A.L.D and Ph.D. from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. She lives in New York with her husband, a photographer, their daughter, and two French bulldogs named Cleopatra and Chace.

Jonathan Wahl has served as the Director of the Jewelry Center at the 92nd Street Y since 1999 and has guided the Center’s growth to become that largest program of its kind in the nation and the oldest open studio in NYC. He is responsible for developing and overseeing a curriculum that has more than 55 classes weekly and 15 visiting artists yearly, 25 faculty members, maintaining four state-of-the-art jewelry and metalsmithing studios, and promoting the department locally and nationally as a jewelry resource center. Wahl founded the only Jewelry residency in New York city for a Jeweler and a scholarship based High School Jewelry Program-Teen Gems. Additionally, Wahl oversees and hosts an active lecture program with notables from the Jewelry and Design worlds at 92Y. Biennially he organizes international trips to visit contemporary jewelers and historical collections across the globe.

Jonathan Wahl’s artwork ranges from drawing and sculpture to the decorative arts. His work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the MFA Boston, the Houston Museum of Fine and the Museum of Arts of Arts and Design in NYC. It has been featured or reviewed in publications as diverse as The New York Times, Art in America, The New Yorker, Architectural Digest, Oprah Magazine, W Jewelry, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Metalsmith Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, the Aventurine and the Advocate, among others. Wahl has been awarded the Louis Comfort Tiffany Emerging Artist Fellowship from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships one for Craft and one for Drawing and the Pennsylvania Society of Goldsmiths Award for "Outstanding Achievement." he was named one of the top-10 jewelers to watch by W Jewelry in 2006. Wahl’s work is exhibited both nationally and internationally.