Nearly 30 years of working for variations of the same company is a long time, and it can't be easy saying good-bye, but that's just what Joan Parker is doing as she resigns from De Beers LV. For the last three years, Parker has been the public relations director for De Beers LV, the retail chain half-owned by the De Beers Group (and technically a separate company). Before that, she spent over 25 years promoting diamonds for De Beers as head of the Diamond Information Center. “I want another challenge,” she says. “I've done what I set out to do [at De Beers LV]—establish it as a brand—and now I need to move on to something new.” Parker plans to write a book about her industry experiences, and “will announce what I'm doing” later on. After heading her own p.r. agency, in 1977 Parker joined the Diamond Information Center, which was then a part of ad agency N.W. Ayer.