When Loloma returned to Hotevilla in 1966, Verma was still in high school. She began helping in his studio and stayed for more than two decades, working at his side through the years that transformed Native American jewelry forever. As she has said of that time, "I was most fortunate to be able to work with him, listen to him, and listen to his conversations with other artists of various kinds for those years of apprenticeship."

After Loloma closed his studio in 1988 and passed away in 1991, Sonwai established her own workshop in Hotevilla and stepped fully into her own voice. She works primarily in 18-karat gold, set with only the finest stones—turquoise, coral, lapis lazuli, opal, sugilite, charoite, ironwood, fossilized ivory, diamonds, and colored pearls—hand-cutting each stone and fitting the pieces together like a puzzle into the luminous stone-to-stone inlay that has become her signature.

Her jewelry is inseparable from her life on Hopi—its landscape, its colors, its ceremony. "Charles taught that beauty is all around us on Hopi," she reflects. "By combining elements from what is a part of my everyday life, the finest of ideas, with the finest of materials, I can interpret a part of Hopi for people to see and wear."

Each piece is entirely handcrafted, and no two are alike. In 2018, the Heard Museum in Phoenix honored her with a five-month retrospective, Sonwai: The Jewelry of Verma Nequatewa, and her work is held in major collections including the Museum of Northern Arizona and the Heard Museum, as well as private collections worldwide. In 2007 she published Visions of Sonwai, chronicling two decades of work under her hallmark.