INTERVIEWS
As part of our 20 Stories of Impact series, we’re speaking with RJC members, stakeholders, and pioneers who’ve shaped our journey over the past two decades, exploring sustainability, industry trends, the future of jewellery, and more. Elodie Daguzan is Executive Director of the World Diamond Council (WDC), the association charged with representing the diamond and jewelry sectors in the Kimberley Process, which is the international forum dedicated to eradicating conflict diamonds from the worldwide trade. She was appointed to the position in January 2020. She is also a founding member of the Young Diamantaires and of its Organizing Committee.
The WDC’s alignment with the Responsible Jewellery Council has always been rooted in our shared mission: to foster a more transparent, ethical, and sustainable jewellery industry. From the outset, we saw the RJC as a natural partner—one that brings the entire supply chain together around common values and standards. For us, joining forces was not only strategic, but also essential.
By working together, we’ve been able to amplify our efforts to enhance responsible sourcing and, in doing so, ensure consumer confidence in natural diamonds—especially through our cooperation on the revised System of Warranties when it was embedded in the Code of Practices, just to name one example. Our hope was, and still is, to create systemic impact through collaboration—and the RJC has been a valuable platform for that since day one.
Also, RJC and WDC are, in my view, family. Think about it: the RJC Vice President is the Immediate Past President of the WDC, and your Honorary Secretary is also our long standing Secretary! It doesn’t mean we do everything together or exactly the same, but it ensures a much-needed consistency and coherence in leadership—something the industry desperately needs in these turbulent times.
The RJC has made an extraordinary contribution over the past two decades by setting rigorous standards and promoting a culture of accountability and continuous improvement across the jewellery supply chain. And I particularly want to emphasise the concept of continuous improvement, because it is crucial for topics such as responsible practices and transparency. You don’t go from zero to 100 overnight—it takes resilience and a long-term view.
The RJC’s Code of Practices and Chain of Custody standards have become benchmarks for responsible business in our sector. Perhaps most importantly, the RJC has helped shape the global conversation around ethics and sustainability in jewellery.
As we look ahead, I’d love to see the RJC deepen its engagement and commitment to global sustainability goals, and continue guiding industry players with practical tools that are actionable and can actually deliver results. In short, I’m hoping the RJC will foster measurable positive impact—impact that is felt by the people and regions that need it most, and that also brings pride to the industry players who are engaged in it.
The change I most want to see isn’t in how we approach transparency, sustainability, or responsible sourcing—I trust our industry to keep progressing on those fronts, especially as mindsets evolve and technology enables deeper traceability and accountability. What we need now—actually, what I really want—is a change in narrative.
I’m often perplexed—frankly, even frustrated—by the factually incorrect data and misleading stories circulated to smear the reputation of an industry that actually puts in the work and contributes meaningfully to socio-economic development. It’s time to push back against these outdated tropes and tell the full story—one that is fair, equitable, balanced, and grounded in reality. And reality is rarely black or white.
But the truth is, natural diamonds do create real impact: they provide funding for education, healthcare, infrastructure, livelihoods, and empower women in some of the world’s most remote and underserved regions—places that are often among the most beautiful on earth. That’s the story that needs to be heard, and it’s one we should be proud to tell. And that is the story I stand by—because I’ve seen it with my own eyes.
Responsible business is not a trend—it’s the foundation for the future of our industry. And in our industry, trust is everything. But trust isn’t given; it’s earned. We earn it through consistency, transparency, and by doing what we say we will do. That’s where education and genuine and effective collaboration come in—not just within our own sector, but also with governments, civil society, and consumers.
The Kimberley Process is the perfect example of what responsible business can look like when different stakeholders come together for a common purpose. It laid the groundwork for industry-wide engagement in responsible sourcing and created a mechanism for international cooperation—something unprecedented, never done before, and still unmatched today, which we must continue to strengthen. The World Diamond Council, through its System of Warranties, has expanded on that foundation, encouraging companies to go beyond conflict prevention and commit to broader human rights and due diligence principles.
And on top of the System of Warranties—which serves as the baseline for industry self-regulation—the RJC builds its Code of Practices, providing robust, third-party-verified standards. From there, private companies have developed their own proprietary standards, such as De Beers’ Best Practice Principles or Signet’s Responsible Sourcing Protocol. It’s a layered and complementary approach that shows how responsible business can scale when each part of the value chain cooperates and takes ownership.
So, when I think of responsible business transforming the future, I see a natural diamond industry that embraces this kind of multi-stakeholder governance, that educates itself and others, and that collaborates not out of obligation but out of conviction. And that conviction needs to be rooted in the simple truth that when the industry thrives collectively, everyone—at every level—prospers. That’s how we rebuild trust—not just externally, but within the industry itself.
