When Charlotte Rose was elected president of the London Diamond Bourse in June 2026, she didn't just break an 86-year tradition—she became the first woman to lead any diamond bourse globally.
Yet for Rose, the milestone is less about her own achievement and more about what it signals for an industry often perceived as resistant to change.
In an exclusive interview with Rough & Polished’s Mathew Nyaungwa, the third-generation diamond specialist lays out an ambitious agenda: rebuilding membership tiers for the next generation, forging international partnerships like the recent Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Dubai Diamond Exchange, and tackling the "de-banking" crisis that she describes as the single most pressing issue facing legitimate traders today.
With a clear-eyed vision that blends entrepreneurial pragmatism with a commitment to transparency and education, Rose makes the case that the Bourse must evolve to remain indispensable—not just for the established players, but for the young professionals who will carry the trade forward.
Below are excerpts from the interview.
You've made history as the first woman to lead the London Diamond Bourse in its 86-year history, and you're believed to be the first female president of any diamond bourse globally. You've said you wish this fact were unremarkable. What does this milestone signify for the industry, and what more needs to be done to ensure leadership roles are truly accessible to all?
It signifies the trade's capacity to change. Eighty-six years is a long time for one pattern to hold, and the fact that it's broken now, through an ordinary Council election, not a special initiative, says something useful to other bourses: change here comes from noticing new talent coming up, whether young or female, and giving them the chance to lead from the front with the skills they've already earned. It's tempting to stick with what we know. But the strong foundations that got London this far won't be enough to keep it there; we need to keep evolving and moving forward – the same applies across all bourses.
As for what's left to do – plenty. One appointment doesn't fix a pipeline problem. If leadership roles are going to be genuinely open to more people, the work has to start earlier than at the top: embracing up-and-coming talent onto committees, ensuring that everyone with the passion and capability to contribute feels welcome in our industry. The job isn't finished when one woman gets elected, it's finished when nobody thinks to count how there have been.
You've spoken about the importance of education and supporting the next generation of diamond professionals. What specific initiatives do you have in mind to make the trade more accessible and ensure the London Diamond Bourse remains commercially relevant for the professionals who will carry it forward?
We've rebuilt our membership tiers so someone starting out doesn't have to sign up to the same offer as an established business, you join at the level that fits your business today, and it grows as you do. We need solid, accessible pathways for the next generation to come into the industry. My vision is to get rid of the common misconception I often hear from the younger generation: that the Bourse isn't built for them. The LDB is here to support each and every one of our members, whether they're just starting to build a client base, or they've got one in the thousands.
We're expanding our educational offering and keeping it affordable and genuinely relevant to how a modern trader actually works. Gemmological qualifications are already well covered by other bodies, so we haven't tried to duplicate that. Ours is about the practicalities that sit either side of it: the hands-on trading skills, and, just as importantly, actually being able to sell the diamond you've been trained so well to grade. Knowing a stone inside out and knowing how to move it in the market are two different skills, and too often the second one gets left to chance.
I want the Bourse to become genuinely indispensable to its members' businesses, through the practical solutions we provide and the knowledge we can equip them with. If you're trading diamonds in the UK, belonging to the LDB should be an obvious decision as we can support your business every step of the way. The reality is we can't do that alone. We need to work closely with other organisations: educators, trade bodies and bourses to expand our offering, elevate our standing and most importantly learn from one another. Just this month we signed a memorandum of understanding with the Dubai Diamond Exchange. It links our members directly with over 1,300 firms trading through Dubai, and it's built around the same principle as everything else here: knowledge exchange and responsible trade practised properly.
As a third-generation jewellery and diamond specialist with a background in valuation, auctioneering, and running your own businesses, how has your entrepreneurial experience shaped your vision for modernising the London Diamond Bourse?
Running my own businesses taught me that it doesn't matter how something has always been done, it matters whether it works today. The Bourse itself has evolved plenty over its 86 years, just slowly. What I bring now is the pace of someone who has changed the way their business operates quickly, and still kept every client who trusted me at the start.
Solomons & Rose was built from nothing: my business partner and I began by selling silver charms online, which grew into vintage and antique jewellery. From there we began serving private clients directly, sourcing stones and pieces of jewellery. That led to valuing what they had, and sometimes buying it from them to place with another private client or member of the trade. That whole progression eventually became Furlong, our online fine jewellery auction house. I know first-hand what it takes to change a business with the times, changing enough to keep growing without ever compromising the foundations you built it on in the first place.
That’s the same experience I bring to the role of President. It starts by asking the tough question – does what we’re offering work today? And answering it honestly, then working out how to fill in the blanks. The way consumers buy diamonds has changed a great deal, and so has the way many of us do business. Our support has to keep pace with that.
Your first formal international partnership as President was the signing of an MoU with the Dubai Diamond Exchange. Why was Dubai the right partner for this “new chapter,” and what tangible benefits do you foresee for members of both bourses?
Dubai was a natural choice, it's simply where a large share of the trade already happens. It's become one of the world's most significant diamond centres, and if London wants its members properly connected to where diamonds actually move today, ignoring that would be an odd way to start a new chapter.
This links our members directly with over 1,300 firms trading through Dubai, which is a genuine expansion of who you can trade with as an LDB member. Beyond that, we've built the MoU around three things: proper knowledge exchange, closer cooperation on responsible trade, and educational links, because there's a fair amount both trading centres can teach each other.
I signed this with Ahmed Bin Sulayem, DDE’s chairperson, and what struck me most in our conversations wasn't the paperwork, it was how similar our visions actually are. He's built the DMCC into a genuinely thriving hub through very deliberate choices about what would actually help the people trading through it, and that's the same exercise I'm running in London, just at a different scale. We'll never compare on carats traded, London simply isn't that kind of market, but we can absolutely compare on how easy we make it to do business.
Dubai is the first of these, not the only one I have in mind. I'd like to build the same kind of relationship with bourses across the globe, some we can learn from, some who might learn something from us.
You've stated your desire to "elevate our presence both in the U.K. and internationally". How do you see the London Diamond Bourse's role evolving on the global stage, particularly in fostering collaboration with other trading centres around the world?
London's role has to be earned the same way any relationship earns trust, through consistency over time. I’d like to see more partnerships like the one we've just signed with the Dubai Diamond Exchange, closer working relationships with other bourses, and making sure London is a name other trading centres think of when they're solving a shared problem.
I'd like to see us collaborating on the things that are genuinely hard to solve alone: consistent standards on disclosure, education standards, practical solutions on finance and banking, so that everything we can provide solves a problem for the trade, no matter how small or large that problem may be. The WFDB already gives bourses a forum for that, and I want London to play a major part in it.
I'd also like to see something a lot simpler than standards and policy: bourses working together so their members can do more business. Partnerships that put our members directly in front of another bourse's members, so a deal doesn't depend on who happens to know who. We're all here to earn money, and connecting people who can actually trade with each other sits right at the top of my list. The Dubai MoU already does some of that, linking our members to over 1,300 firms, and I'd like more agreements built around that same, fairly blunt, purpose.
The hardest part of any of this is laying the groundwork to make sure that these collaborations continue to evolve over time, and outlast my presidency all together. They should still be as useful and relevant in five year’s time as they are today. I’m interested in a global role that members feel the benefit of.
In your opinion, what is the single most important issue facing the diamond industry today, and how can the London Diamond Bourse, under your leadership, help address it?
I wouldn't rank the issues facing this industry, because that's rarely how it actually feels from inside a business. Changing consumer dynamics, synthetic competition, tariffs - they’re all live, and any one of them can be the thing that applies the most pressure. But if I had to name one that’s on my radar in London, it would be finance.
A lot of diamond businesses have felt the effect of de-banking, regardless of how clean an individual business actually is. It's a blunt response to a genuine compliance problem, and it's squeezing legitimate traders out of the ordinary banking relationships every other business takes for granted, on top of lenders already having pulled back from financing diamond stock the way they used to. You can have every bit of consumer trust in the world, and it won't help you if you can't get a bank account, or the working capital, to run the business at all.
Where the Bourse comes in is making the case, collectively, for why we deserve better than a blanket risk rating and providing approved solutions for our members to use that reinforce this. This is something David Troostwyk worked on strongly in his previous term, and one we will be continuing on with into mine. The stronger the case, the harder it is for a bank to justify treating every diamond business the same, whatever its actual risk profile.
You've been a passionate advocate for transparency and consumer confidence, contributing to the World Diamond Council's System of Warranties campaign. How important is it for the London Diamond Bourse to champion these values, and what more can bourses do to strengthen consumer trust in natural diamonds?
It's about as important as anything the Bourse does, because without it the rest of what I've talked about - education, disclosure, even the finance argument doesn't have anywhere to stand. The System of Warranties exists so that when a diamond changes hands, whoever’s buying it can trust the paperwork that came with it, not just the word of whoever's selling.
Warranties only work when everyone in the chain takes it as seriously as the first link did, one of the most important jobs for any bourse is not just enforce those standards amongst its membership, but to support its members to uphold those standards consistently. There are many in the new generation who won’t understand what the System of Warranties is, or the importance of it in our industry, so we need to work to raise the profile of it amongst that generation and ensure that everyone entering the diamond industry starts off on the right foot.
We can strengthen consumer trust by ensuring our members sing from the same hymn sheet and all fully understand the importance of things like the WDC SoW and can communicate that effectively to consumers. Consumer trust won't be won with a single campaign ad. It's built the same way any level of trust is, with consistency.
With David Troostwyk now serving as Vice President, you have continuity in leadership. How will you build on the foundations he established, while also bringing your own vision and fresh perspectives to the role?
David spent his time as President building exactly the kind of foundations you want to inherit: sound governance, solid relationships with other bourses, and initiatives already in the pipeline. We worked incredibly closely together while I was Vice President, and I'm lucky that we share much of the same vision, so a lot of what looks like my own vision now was actually shaped in conversation with him.
Where I bring something different is the route I took to get here. I came up through the ranks having gone back into education as an adult, and I was lucky enough to meet my business partner, Seth, who helped me build my career. But I saw first-hand the challenges my peers faced breaking into this industry without the right tools and connections, so I'm in a good position to represent that experience. I'm also well placed to represent the members who aren't traditional diamond dealers. Our membership is more diverse now: private jewellers, retailers, valuers and having worked in that part of the industry myself, I understand the kind of support they actually need.
David and I are genuinely aligned, and the initiatives you'll see develop during my presidency will be as much his work as mine. It doesn't feel like a President and Vice President relationship so much as two people working towards a shared goal, with a strong, stable Council behind us to help make it happen.
What legacy do you hope to leave after your presidency? Looking ahead, what would you consider a successful tenure at the helm of the London Diamond Bourse?
I'd like to be judged less on any single thing I've done and more on whether the Bourse, when I hand it on, fits the people who'll be running it after me. I’d like my legacy to be that a young trader joining in ten years' time finds a Bourse that’s obviously built for them.
Success looks like the younger generation having an easy route to join the trade, and operate armed with the tools so their business can thrive. It looks like the DDE partnership having grown into several more like it, so that London is genuinely part of a connected trading network. And it looks like the finance conversation having moved even a little, so that fewer good businesses are shut out of ordinary banking because of the sector they're in rather than how they actually operate.
Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor-In-Chief, Rough & Polished
