For decades, fine jewelry was sold on carat weight, certification and the promise that a piece would hold its value. Today shoppers choose for themselves, lab-grown diamonds trade at a fraction of their former price, and gold moves month to month. This panel examines what customers value now and what customer-centricity requires of a brand, with lessons for fashion, beauty and luxury.

Kathryn Edison Money has spent her career building and scaling consumer and retail companies from early stage through IPO, with a focus on design- and purpose-driven brands. Most recently, she spent ten years on the executive leadership team at Brilliant Earth, where she ran merchandising, product design and development, inventory and retail expansion as the company grew 18x from $25M to $445M and expanded from one showroom to ~40. She previously held COO/President and CFO roles at two earlier-stage consumer companies. Having begun her career in M&A and private equity investing, she combines her cross-functional operating perspective with financial acumen to drive profitable growth. Kathryn sits on the Strategic Advisory Board of HALO Branded Solutions, a TPG-backed company, and on the board of Women for Women International.

Maria Then is a jewelry product strategy and design executive who has created commercially relevant product for luxury houses and billion-dollar retailers, including Signet, Michael Hill, and Michael Kors. Her work connects design language, customer behavior, assortment architecture, and margin discipline as one system. She has built new brands, repositioned legacy assortments, and led product direction across the US, Australia, and Europe. Maria trained in design at FIT and Parsons and holds gemology and fine jewelry certifications from GIA and L'École Van Cleef & Arpels.

Elizabeth Zietlow "EZ" is a co-founder of Hover Media, a boutique brand strategy and activation consultancy with a differentiator most firms can't claim: they've sat in your seat. As a former VP of Experience Insights, Research & Strategy, EZ has spent her career using data to ground organizations and move them forward through ambiguity — across CRM, loyalty, segmentation, and digital strategy at brands like Signet Jewelers, Citi FinTech, and eBay. She brings genuine insider empathy as a systems thinker who sees customer experience not as a department but as the connective tissue of a brand.

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