Duncan Pay

As GIA’s Senior Vice President and Chief Academic Officer, Duncan Pay oversees the Institute’s global education operations in gemology and jewelry design and manufacturing, including on-campus, distance education, the GemKids program for school children and the GIA Alumni Association. 
 
Pay’s 20-year career at GIA has bridged education and research, strengthening both. He led the adaptation of GIA’s course material for distance education and strengthened GIA’s gemology courses by enabling timely integration of new findings from the Institute’s research and laboratory teams. As editor-in-chief of Gems & Gemology since 2013, he oversaw a renaissance of the 84-year-old journal, expanding the range of research-based articles and building print and online readership.
 
Prior to joining GIA in 1998, Pay had more than 13 years’ experience in the jewelry industry including jewelry and gemological instrument retail sales, jewelry manufacturing, and colored stone buying and wholesaling. He was previously course development manager for the Asian Institute of Gemological Sciences in Bangkok, Thailand. Pay holds a Bachelor of Science degree in geology from the University of Wales, Great Britain and a Graduate Gemologist diploma (GG) from GIA. He is also a Fellow of the Gemmological Association of Great Britain (FGA) and received the association’s Tully Medal – as the best student of 1987.