De Beers natural diamonds chief Sally Morrison to leave this summer

Sally Morrison’s departure leaves De Beers without one of the sharpest voices behind its natural-diamond comeback at exactly the moment the category is under the most pressure from lab-grown stones. Morrison, who served as De Beers’ natural diamonds market lead and director of PR for natural diamonds, is leaving the company later this summer, and De Beers confirmed the move without issuing a formal statement.

Her exit matters because Morrison was not simply managing public relations. She had been tapped in September 2024 to lead De Beers’ new U.S. category-marketing effort, part of the company’s Origins strategy to revive flagging natural-diamond demand. That push was meant to restore elements of De Beers’ older American advertising machine, a model that had largely ended in 2010, when the company no longer controlled the conversation in the same way it once had.

The backdrop to that reset was stark. In June 2024, De Beers chief executive Al Cook said the lab-grown diamond boom had cost the U.S. natural-diamond business 14% of the total market, equal to $7 billion in 2023. In a market where lab-grown goods have eroded both price confidence and consumer clarity, Morrison became one of the executives charged with making natural diamonds feel distinct again, not as a commodity, but as a story.

That story was most visible in De Beers’ Desert Diamonds campaign, a more poetic but still strategic effort Morrison helped shape. She said the concept grew out of consumer focus groups and was designed to connect the colors found in natural diamonds with imagery of the Earth and desert landscapes. The campaign was an attempt to turn what can be seen as imperfection into identity: the soft browns, champagnes and other warm tones that set natural stones apart from the brighter, more uniform look often associated with lab-grown diamonds.

Shefali Murdia has joined De Beers as U.S. general manager in natural diamonds, and she now steps into a post where messaging is as important as merchandising. Morrison’s exit suggests De Beers is not just changing personnel. It is testing whether its next chapter in the United States will lean on the same category-building language Morrison helped develop, or whether the company will recast natural diamonds for a market where the fight is no longer only about rarity, but about who gets to define value.