The Couture Diamond Leadership Conference announced its closing keynote speakers for the two-day conference to be held Oct. 13-14, 2004, at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Steve Forbes, president and CEO of Forbes Inc. and editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine, and Maurice Tempelsman, chairman of the board of Lazare Kaplan International Inc., will engage in a “conversation” about industry transformation. They will be the perfect motivational complement to the opening keynoter, Donald Trump.

Forbes is a widely respected business prognosticator whose flagship publication, Forbes, is the nation’s leading business magazine, with a circulation of 900,000. He has overseen the expansion of Forbes in the past decade with the launch of a number of new publications and businesses, among them: Forbes FYI, Forbes Global, Forbes Brasil, the Gilder Technology Report, and Forbes.com. He serves on numerous boards, including The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, The National Taxpayers Union, and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Tempelsman’s knowledge of the diamond pipeline is unparalleled. His company, Lazare Kaplan, is the largest cutter and polisher of “ideal cut” diamonds in the United States. He has served on the board of the Corporate Council on Africa, where he was chairman from 1999-2002, and is a current trustee of the Africa-America Institute and the Eurasia Foundation. He is chairman of the International Advisory Council of the Harvard AIDS Institute, is an honorary member of the corporation of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and has served on several presidential commissions. For information about the conference, contact VNU’s Lars Parker-Myers at (646) 654-7669.