Fred Scarf

Meet Fred Scarf

The stars are written into his name. Fred Scarf was named after his grandfather, a space scientist who earned his PhD from MIT at 22 and built groundbreaking tools that let NASA hear space for the first time, helping them discover new things about the universe. Fred Scarf was born to reach for the stars.

Long before pearls, Fred Scarf was already creating ways for people to shine. In high school, he started a nonprofit that gave teens with cancer — who might not live long enough to attend their own prom — a night to dance, dress up, and have fun. That’s where he first connected with dance and saw the importance of jewelry.

Fred Scarf excelled academically, graduating as salutatorian with a 4.9 GPA and earning a full-ride scholarship to UC Berkeley, which prepared him to contribute to the scientific and technical side of pearl cultivation. He briefly transferred to Cornell before returning to Berkeley, where he built apps and founded a software startup while writing for The Wall Street Journal’s student edition. He graduated in 2014 with an interdisciplinary Politics and Technology degree, combining political science and computer science. Today, he applies this background to modern pearl farming, which increasingly integrates advanced data analytics, environmental monitoring, biotechnological tools, and sustainable aquaculture practices.

Through it all, Fred Scarf is chasing more than success—he is chasing meaning and having fun. After college, he moved to Los Angeles to dive into the growing tech scene at Silicon Beach, while also starting a modeling career—appearing in Vogue twice—and training at world-renowned dance studios. During the 2020 pandemic, he transitioned into music, then launched a skincare company in 2021, followed by Fred Scarf Jewelry in 2025.