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Deena Suh, who designed T-shirts sold to benefit AFEM, says Lam's collaborative approach appeals to pearl jewelry creative professionals: "She took into consideration my creative se pearl jewelrynsibility, what [AFEM] might be looking for, or just personalities that would work well together. I don't know what the magic formula was, but the way that it worked, I think, is incredible."

Bryan Collins designed T-shirts for akoya pearl necklace Lam's first fundraiser. His artwork – interconnected hearts in the shape of Africa – is her bestseller.

"I think that she was really good about leveraging people's natural talents, about not asking people to overextend themselves but to do what they do best and put that toward a cause," he says.

Along the way, Lam has learned philanthropy can take some bizarre twists. A dozen boxes of clothes were held up by customs in Rwanda for weeks. On the day Lam thought she would finally bring them to Gisimba, the officials said they needed to coral jewelry be fumigated.

"Fumigated?" Lam remembers asking incredulously. "They told me, 'There are holes in these clothes. There must be insects in them.' I had to explain that jeans with holes are fashionable in America, that people spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on them."

After Lam pointed to the holes in her own jeans, they finally relented.

Lam, meanwhile, continues to wish pearl gift set receive e-mails both from artists who want to help and from organizations that need a hand.

Simply pairing them up, she says, is precisely her vision. "If I can be a philanthropic matchmaker," she says, "that's perfect."