NDC Head Amber Pepper on Spreading the Diamond Message

Amber Pepper is not interested in nostalgia — nor, it seems, in the industry’s reflex to look backward. 

When she took the helm of the Natural Diamond Council (NDC), succeeding David Kellie, she arrived with the perspective of an industry outsider and the instincts of a luxury insider. Officially CEO as of February 1 this year after joining in November 2025, Pepper brings a career shaped at Tapestry, Farfetch, Harrods, and most recently Mytheresa, where she led the luxury e-commerce platform’s global marketing and customer strategy. 

Her mandate is not to reinvent diamonds, but to reset how they speak to the world. 

“For me, natural diamonds absolutely own that story,” she says. “We have the ultimate product: the rarity, the authenticity, the heritage, the incredible emotional attributes.” The issue, she suggests, is not what diamonds are inherently, but how they are being communicated. “The emotion and the depth of the storytelling are there. How are we sharing that in the right way with the consumer? That’s 100% the opportunity.” 

Gen Z and younger millennials, who are increasingly driving growth in diamond demand, are digitally native, values-driven, and far more informed than earlier generations. “We have a very different consumer that we are speaking to,” Pepper says. “She cares so much more about having authentic shared values and expects what she is buying into to have those shared values.” 

The implication is clear: Legacy messaging is no longer enough. “We have to now start speaking to this new consumer in the way she wants to be spoken to,” asserts the NDC head. “It’s not enough just to have the richness of the storytelling. It’s how we tell those stories and how we show up where she consumes that media.” 

Pepper sees the NDC as both orchestrator and amplifier. “I think the NDC’s role is to come in and unify the industry and pull all of that richness of knowledge and insight together so that we are speaking in a clearer voice. We are in a landscape where there are other brands that are very good at speaking in a very clear voice and one consistent voice. And I think that’s what natural diamonds need to focus on.” 

Education, too, is a priority, particularly in differentiating natural diamonds from lab-grown. “It is the role of the NDC to empower the consumer to understand what they’re buying and to feel like they can have trust and faith in what they’re buying,” she says. “There is a huge [amount of work] around education that is burning to happen.” 

What she rejects outright is the industry’s defensive posture. “We have to have a filter of optimism,” she argues. “If we believe in natural diamonds, then we should have absolute belief that we can share that message and that emotion with the consumer.” 

For Pepper, the future of diamonds will not be secured through comparison, but through conviction — through telling a story that is already there, but has not yet fully been heard.  

Main image: Amber Pepper. (Amber Pepper)