Meet the folks who bring keep Mountain Song Jewelers up and running! We'll admit, we have the best jobs around--we spend our day connecting awesome clients like you with the jewelry of your dreams!
Mountain Song Jewelers offers affordable bridal, engagement, custom, vintage, antique, and new jewelry serving Greeneville, Johnson City, Bristol, Kingsport, Morristown, Knoxville, and all of East Tennessee. Our same services are available globally.
Robert Sherman
Rob is our owner and one of our artists. Mountain Song was his brainchild.
Rob Sherman, owner and founder of MSJ, came to jewelry late in life, despite coming from a three-generation tradition. Rob spent his childhood in the American West with time spent between Arizona and Texas—the wide-open desert landscape of Arizona (Prescott area) will always be home to him. He, along with his siblings, was raised by his grandmother in what was sometimes, or even often, desperately poor circumstances. He realized at a young age he had to shape his own destiny to change his circumstances. He moved east to attend ETSU in the early 1990s, where he and Jonita met and were friends but lost touch for 15 years after. He dabbled in many jobs from security, working with the homeless, construction, until he eventually taught himself to rebuild and repair engines and built a small business doing such. When he realized this wasn’t his calling, he began intensely concentrating where he needed to be in life. His heart kept bringing him back to jewelry. He rediscovered a branch of his family who were jewelers whom he hadn’t spoken to in two decades. At his first cross-country phone call to cousin Robert Drozd (Bob) to reintroduce himself and ask if Bob would train him to make jewelry, Bob abruptly hung up the phone. Later Bob explained he had been so overcome with emotion to hear that finally the next generation wanted to carry on the family tradition. Bob patiently coached Rob over the next year and Rob began silversmithing. Rob and Jonita traveled the art fair circuit and in 2017, took the biggest gamble to date and opened the brick & mortar Mountain Song Jewelers. Rob is the ambitious mastermind behind MSJ’s growth and trajectory and is passionate about creating an experience where people from any walk of life can afford something nice and where every person is treasured and welcomed. Because of his childhood experiences, where often charity intervened to ease the burdens of poverty, Rob is aggressively dedicated to giving back to his community. Jonita & Rob have three ambitiously clever children, one slightly evil cat, one nice cat (but will cut you if needed), and one not-very-smart-but-very-loveable dog.
Jonita Ashley
Jonita is the business guru. She grew up in the mountains of East Tennessee—daughter of Shirley and JD Ashley-- she attended elementary and high school in Greene County and went off (30 miles away) to the big city of Johnson City for her bachelors degree (History) and Master of Public Administration (a brief, miserable stint in zoning enforcement for a local city convinced her that government work was something she wasn’t able to sacrifice a chunk of her soul for). She left the city planning career and returned to higher ed. She has been an RA and RD in her undergrad and grad days and thought hanging out with college kids for a career couldn’t be all bad. She moved home to Greeneville in 2003 and began a new career in higher ed. Through unintentional drive to be competitive in everything, she found herself promoted and advanced in her higher ed role over the next 15 years. Somehow, she ended up with a PhD from the University of Tennessee—those years are a blur of driving, writing, working 50+ hours a week and raising a baby. But somewhere in there, she got really dang good at stats and numbers and data collection. Her higher ed career came to a spectacular end in 2017 when she and Rob decided to throw all their cards on the table and go for their dream with no regrets and no looking back. Rob (love of her life, who, like jewelry, she didn’t discover until a little later in life though they were close friends in their college days) has a work ethic, energy, and streak of unbridled ambition closely matched only by Jonita’s—though you don’t see them IN the business often, they are always working ON the business and absolutely adore serving their community through helping them create memories with beautiful jewelry. Jonita & Rob have three ambitiously clever children, one slightly evil cat, one nice cat (but will cut you if needed), and one not-very-smart-but-very-loveable dog.
Ronda Gentry
Ronda is MSJ’s numbers and IT wizard; she is also the Executive Director of our Foundation. Originally from North Carolina (go Blue Devils), Ronda has found herself living in East Tennessee for well over a decade. She has a Bachelors in Mathematics from Campbell University and a Masters of Divinity from Duke University. (She really doesn’t know what she wants to be when she grows up.) After a brief stint in Florida, Ronda found herself moving to East Tennessee to become a Chaplain at a college. (Yes, she’s also an ordained minister.) She quickly found herself being promoted within higher ed, eventually serving as a Vice President. During this time, she completed a PhD and even wrote a textbook. (Overachiever much?) Ronda has always had a head for numbers and spent a good deal of her time understanding factors that create positive outcomes. When her higher education path suddenly ended in 2020, her friend Jonita reached out saying that Ronda needed to be a part of the MSJ team. Always up for a challenge, and knowing that she and Jonita had already done amazing work together in higher ed, Ronda took the leap to the world of jewelry. She is excited to work for a small business which has a big heart for the community. Ronda is married to the love of her life, Stacy, who shows her to the joys of Tennessee, while recognizing that she will always be a Blue Devil. Together they have two sons who are precocious, a mutt puppy who keeps the kids in line, and a cat who secretly plots to take over the house.
