Amber Pepper says she believes the new Diamond Collective she heads can provide the jewelry industry with the clarity and messaging it needs to unite both industry members and consumers in their desire for natural diamonds.
Pepper spent more than two decades at luxury and retail brands including Mytheresa, Farfetch, Tapestry, and Harrods. Her superpower is bringing a consumer-forward perspective to retail, and that is why the Natural Diamond Council hired her in November 2025 to take over from David Kellie as its CEO.
In an exclusive interview with JCK Oct. 1, Pepper described her job as focused on strengthening consumer desire and confidence, bringing the industry together around a clear and authoritative story, and ensuring natural diamonds are relevant to all generations.
The biggest evidence of her efforts came when the Natural Diamond Council rebranded as The Diamond Collective. It got a new logo, a new lavender color palette, and a new attitude, as evidenced in its buzzy sizzle reel posted on Instagram.
Pepper says she and her team worked for the past six months to get to this point. The goal is to create desire for diamonds and turn it into demand—a difficult challenge in this K-shaped economy, with diamond prices falling and diamond companies like De Beers Group wondering what’s next in terms of ownership and operations.
JCK spoke with Pepper about the name change, The Diamond Collective’s mission, and what’s next for the industry.
You came out September 22 with a huge announcement. The Natural Diamond Council would rebrand as The Diamond Collective—a new name, new logo, new strategy. What has the reaction been so far?
It’s interesting, isn’t it, when you go out publicly with a strategy. This industry and our role within the industry is so unique. I very much felt the need for that kind of absolute transparency to say, “This is where we’re at, this is what we’re thinking.” I thought we needed to put it out there and we need to welcome all the discussion. It’s been so fascinating because the feedback’s been phenomenal. But also, you know, there’s some challenging feedback. It’s brought out the most brilliant conversations.
Why remove or eliminate the word natural from The Diamond Collective?
The rebrand and the change of name generates headlines. But, in fact, the name change was the output of our strategic intent. It’s about the intention, the work that we’ve been doing, and all of the insight both with the end consumer but also with the industry and different facets of industry. The output of the work was really our strategic intent of how we felt we needed to operate as an effective organization to deliver moving forward. We were saying, if we are effectively transitioning to say that we are spending the majority of our time on the trade to the majority of our time on the consumer, if that fundamental shift is happening, which is what we very much believe is incredibly important, we need to set ourselves up to be consumer friendly in name and identity.
The decision to drop the word natural was one [of our actions]. We did a lot of insight and we really looked into it. This has been discussed across the industry for some time. President Boko talked about reclaiming diamonds. We must own and have ownership of the word diamond. The qualifier needs to be put in front of diamonds when it refers to whether it’s lab or synthetic, whatever it needs to be called for specific regions. …
Reclaiming the word is a very powerful way of speaking about it. You need to be consistent from end to end. We are 100% focused on natural diamonds. That’s what we are as an entity. That’s why we were created. That’s what we do. We’re here to drive the desirability and the demand for natural diamonds. And we’re here to protect natural diamonds as a category. And I have no issue, by the way, with the word natural being used. It’s not that it suddenly becomes a bad word, but really from an identity perspective, we’re here to reclaim the word diamond and to be unapologetic about that.
Why was the word collective important?
We are enabler or an aggregator of an industry. I think, on a simple level, council sounds very much top down. Collective is much more bringing everybody together and then a step beyond that. Collective is much more consumer friendly and feels much more a language that we can interact with through social. So, the name felt right and I’ve enjoyed the feedback and the conversations around it.
Does The Diamond Collective have an audience or consumer in mind for its early marketing? Gen X? Gen Z? Who is your target?
We did the end consumer insights. We spent a lot of time meeting with retailers and meeting with all different representatives across the industry so we understood both sides of it. And that was very much ageless and not targeted demographic because we didn’t want to put an intention on it. We know diamonds are bought by all different generations and all different ages and for all different reasons. So I think it’s really important to recognize that.
Certainly, we see a really significant opportunity right now with a Gen Z and young millennial audience for various different reasons. They have the highest-growing spending power across the luxury sector in pretty much all the regions that are our focus regions, which are China, India, and the United States as well as Europe. There’s a disproportionate spend and intention to spend within a Gen Z audience towards natural, which is interesting because they’re not necessarily the largest audience in every sector. This is a generation where we all think it’s the generation of AI, the generation of dupes, the generation of fakes. My career has been really grounded in the last 10 years all around Gen Z. You know the biggest piece of feedback you get from that audience is “it’s all about our values” and “we need to recognize shared values in whatever brand or whatever purchase it is we’re buying from.” That’s where there is a real opportunity.
Why do you feel optimistic about the jewelry and diamond industry, despite the challenges ahead?
The first thing was I was unbelievably motivated through the interview process of deciding whether or not I should take this role. Was I the right person for the role? I mean, I’m an outsider. I’ve worked with luxury goods and consumers for my whole career and I know quite a lot about fine jewelry. But the diamond world is so specific and so different. I was really motivated also by the fact that the board was interested in me for that reason. They wanted an outsider’s perspective. So before I even started, I knew that there was an opportunity to really rethink the way we were approaching this. I knew that there was an attitude and intention for innovation. And so much of what you want to do as a CEO is to be empowered, to be able to come create that new vision.
Why is the diamond trustmark important to you?
The natural hallmark is really in the simplest way about trust. It’s just an instantly recognizable, very simple trust mark. I know if I see that that means natural in simplest way and of course around that there’s so much wonderful storytelling you can do, you can build origin into that. There’s so much. But on the simplest level there is a trust issue and that has to be clarified.
How will The Diamond Collective communicate its vision? Will there be one major campaign or many?
The whole media landscape has changed. We have no attention span. We need things that are snackable. Content hits us hard and fast on social; no one reads reports in the way they used to. Unfortunately, all of our brains have been frazzled by our phones. It’s the reality. … For me, this is not about a traditional campaign that goes twice a year. It’s not on a billboard in Times Square where you hope a number of people see it. It’s about creating ongoing dialogues that consumers share with each other. It’s not top-down. It’s not about us to dictate to the consumer what they should be thinking. It’s about us to see this wonderful content and information, clarify all the messages, and make it shareable.
You talk in your vision statement about accountability. What does that look like?
We’re now working on deliverables, which is great because people can judge us on the results. They can judge us on the impact when the work goes out and we start sharing the actual results really clearly. I think the diamond industry deserves this. And we’re seeing some green shoots in this industry already this year. There have been some positive stories and I feel like absolutely instinctively people are still drawn to and still desire natural. They still want that, if we can help them understand what that means and help them get there.
We have an obligation for transparency and an obligation to deliver what is working, what isn’t. It’s been a really interesting dynamic for me, understanding how much, how many across the industry feel so, feel such ownership of our organization. I mean, the reality is I have a very small membership base and I have a very clear mandate from my members and my board. But of course, everybody [in the] industry has thoughts and input and finding ways to bring the wider industry in. I’m looking at a committee structure. I’m looking at membership structure. There has to be a way for the rest of the industry to come in in both mind and budget. We’re going to need to lobby people and bring people together. But I also genuinely believe then once we get clarity of messaging and the power of everyone, together we unite the industry, we can deliver really effectively.
Any hints about the future and what’s coming next?
Something I’m really excited about is a project where we’re working on with next-generation talent because I think there is such an opportunity to celebrate creativity, highlight innovation, and learn from the next-generation talent and also from a very practical sense, support that talent. And the reason why I care about it from a consumer perspective is these are people that have real platforms already. So how do we tap into those platforms? Again, a lot of this is connecting legacy with innovation. I think if we get that right, that will bring in so many different parts of the industry and I think that will really resonate with consumers.
(Photo: Courtesy of The Diamond Collective)
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