Doug Hucker steps back from ICA leadership to focus on gemstone education

Doug Hucker is stepping away from association leadership with a conviction that has defined his career for decades: the more deeply you understand a gemstone, the more meaning it can carry. After almost four years as chief executive of the International Colored Gemstone Association, Hucker retired effective April 22, 2026, and is shifting his focus back to education, the part of the business that first drew him in.

ICA said Hucker’s tenure was marked by financial discipline, key congresses and events, and stronger global member engagement at an association founded in 1984 and now representing nearly 700 industry leaders from 47 countries. Damien Cody, the ICA president, thanked Hucker for his leadership and said the organization hopes to announce new leadership soon. Hucker, who prefers to call himself “semi-retired,” said he is looking forward to retirement and proud of what the board, members and global community accomplished.

That next chapter feels less like an exit than a return. Hucker began in the trade at 22, assembling microscopes at the Gemological Institute of America to help pay for photography school. He later became a GIA instructor, teaching week-long courses on diamonds and gemstones across the United States, a foundation that gave him a technician’s respect for the details that matter most in colored stones: origin, treatment, and the questions that turn a purchase into something personal.

His career then widened into retail and trade leadership. Hucker worked with Richard Krementz at Krementz & Co., later became president and partner of The Registry Ltd., and soon after the American Gem Trade Association was founded in Tucson in 1981, he met founding member Ray Zajicek and was appointed to the AGTA board. In the mid-1990s, he was asked to run the organization and went on to lead AGTA for about 24 years.

AGTA says it was created to promote and protect natural colored gemstones, natural pearls and cultured pearls, and its Spectrum & Cutting Edge Awards have been running since 1984 as a benchmark for design excellence. That long arc, from microscopes at GIA to the boardrooms of AGTA and ICA, has made Hucker one of the most visible advocates for an industry still navigating treatment disclosure, irradiation, fracture filling and market volatility. Now he says he is renewing his love affair with gemstones, and in a trade built on beauty, that kind of education remains the difference between decorative and deeply felt.