Seven hundred members, 47 countries: color gets a new chief
Brandee Dallow — De Beers, Rio Tinto Diamonds, Grandview Klein, the Women's Jewelry Association — took over July 6 as CEO of the International Colored Gemstone Association, just as colored stones take a growing share of the counter.
By The Gemstones Desk
What changed
The colored-stone trade's global association has a new chief executive, and her résumé runs straight through the diamond establishment. Brandee Dallow began July 6 as CEO of the International Colored Gemstone Association, the 1984-founded body that counts nearly 700 dealers, miners, cutters and retailers across 47 countries.
What it means
- Color's problem was never desire — it was trust at scale. Hiring the diamond world's sustainability machinery into the colored-stone association is the clearest signal yet that the category intends to institutionalize while the demand is hot.
- The members will judge her on one thing: whether a sapphire can one day carry its provenance the way a sight box carries its.
Key figures
| New CEOBrandee Dallow | |
|---|---|
| Start | 6 July 2026 |
| BodyInternational Colored Gemstone Association · f. 1984 | |
| Reach≈700 members · 47 countries | |
Source: The appointment · on the record
A diamond résumé for a color job
She arrives from leadership roles at De Beers, Rio Tinto Diamonds and the Responsible Jewellery Council, most recently serving as chief communications and sustainability officer at Grandview Klein Diamonds, with past turns as international president of the Women's Jewelry Association and president of the Community for Ethical Jewelry.
The association, counted
Source: The appointment · on the record
Engagement is the stated brief
ICA president Damien Cody framed the appointment around temperament as much as track record, citing "a thoughtful and collaborative leadership style" and a grasp of the sector's challenges.
The association says Dallow's brief is to strengthen engagement, expand collaboration and build ICA's role as the international voice of colored stones — an organization historically run lean, now taking on a full-time chief executive with a communicator's background at the exact moment its category is having a commercial moment.
| Figure | |
|---|---|
| Members Worldwide | ≈700 |
| Countries Represented | 47 |
| Years Since Founding | 42 |
A lean body taking on a full-time chief executive ICA by the numbers, July 2026. Carat Capital graphics desk.
Demand outran the infrastructure
That moment is measurable at the counter. This desk has tracked color's share of high jewelry launches and auction records all year — from Pomellato's sapphire-mandala Stile Libero to the season in which colored stones and pearls repeatedly out-performed white diamonds against estimate.
Demand has arrived faster than the category's infrastructure: colored stones still lack the certification depth, pricing transparency and origin-tracing that diamonds — whatever their other troubles — spent decades building. A CEO whose entire career is sourcing ethics and supply-chain communication reads as a bet on closing that gap.
The story so far
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A lean body taking on a full-time chief executive