Shine Bright Like a Diamond
Gwyneth Borden has already helped shape San Francisco’s restaurant and transportation Industry—now the public policy maven has her sights set on the diamond world.
Photography by Smeeta Mahanti
“There aren’t any rock stars in public policy,” says Gwyneth Borden. “Most people don’t have any insight into the work that people like me do.”
But if there were a rockstar, it would be her. Her handprint has helped reshape some of San Francisco’s most important industries: the transportation industry, the restaurant industry and now she’s helping shape cleantech via the diamond world, as the director of public policy for the Leonardo DiCaprio-backed Diamond Foundry.
“Pretty much everything that we do in our life intertwines with public policy,” says Borden, who admits that people understand little about what she does. “I think the closest [people think of] would be the Thank You for Smoking movie,” she says laughing, referring to the 2005 dark comedy about a spokesman lobbying for the tobacco industry.
Her latest venture is helping revolutionize the historically ethically-fraught diamond industry by growing carbon-neutral diamonds and putting climate change at the forefront of its public policy.
“They are anatomically exactly the same as diamonds we get from the earth and in some cases they are slightly stronger so they are even more forever, but they’re not depleting a natural resource, they’re not contributing to human rights abuses and all of the ecological and humanitarian issues that can be involved with mined diamonds,” says Borden. “So you have to ask yourself, if you could get a large diamond – if that’s what you value – for less expensive but it’s lab grown versus a mined diamond, why wouldn’t you choose that?”
While diamonds may seem like a major departure from public transportation or restaurants, her role at the Diamond Foundry is the same she’s played in every other industry she’s affected: mastering the intersection of the philosophical, the economical and the political. “You’re really working to advance good laws and governance that uphold whatever your values are. If you care about the environment, if you care about equity and opportunity and racial and social justice,” says Borden. “For people who are paid, you are basically paid advocates for issues or companies to advocate for good policy in those areas that hopefully benefit society.”
It’s just this type of flexible, big-picture thinking—along with her ability to make the mundane and boring nitty-gritty aspects of public policy that would either intimidate or bore most people seem somewhat fun—that has made her one of the most sought-after public policy experts.
“Pretty much everything that we do in our life intertwines with public policy…You’re really working to advance good laws and governance that uphold whatever your values are. If you care about the environment, if you care about equity and opportunity and racial and social justice.”
---Gwyneth Borden
Photography by Smeeta Mahanti
“What I really love is giving people access. When I was working with restaurants, people really leaned on me for regulatory advice or information about rules,” says Borden, who’s ability to break down the seemingly impenetrable language of bureaucracy into something business owners can understand—and even empathize with—is something of a superpower. “People get so frustrated with rules because they can be hard to comply with, but some people are happy to know, oh I’m doing this because it helps protect my privacy or I’m doing this because it ensures we don’t build shoddy buildings or I’m doing this because some people treat their employees bad.”
It’s been a fascinating time to be in public policy because in some ways people have never been more educated about the issues she’s been thinking about for years.
“Before people just heard ‘Defund the police’ or ‘Blue lives Matter,’ but they never understood what the more complex issues are,” says Borden, who has worked for both Barbara Boxer and Gavin Newsom, whom she still counts as a friend. “And as people became more educated they could advocate for themselves for better outcomes.”
Photography by Smeeta Mahanti
Borden, who grew up in the suburbs of Baltimore before moving to work on Capitol Hill after college, moved to San Francisco in 1998 in her twenties to work for a local public affairs firm focused on land-use development. She had no plans to stay, but fell in love with both the topography and lack of judgement she’d become accustomed to on the East Coast.
“On the East Coast they were always ready to judge your social pedigree based upon where you worked and what your parents did, but I love that when I came to San Francisco they didn’t ask me what I did. They asked me where I lived,” says Borden. “I’m not saying that San Francisco is perfect in terms of race but I didn’t feel the racism in the same way that I felt it on the East Coast either, which is part of the kind of question protocol when they’re trying to peg your socioeconomic status. I felt a little more free in that regard.”
Over two decades later, she’s helped shape some of the city’s most important industries, including San Francisco’s infamous restaurant industry where she pushed for more inclusivity as the Executive Director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association.
“Among ownership across the country and the world, people who have restaurants are a very diverse group of all different kinds of people from all different kinds of places and all different kinds of cultures,” says Borden, who has spoken on panels about getting restaurants to hire different pools of populations including the formerly incarcerated, the unhoused or the deaf. “What needs to be elevated is more of a variety in the types of people who get featured. We do have a bit too much of a celebrity culture in our country.”
“Why do we use it as a symbol of love? Because for years marketing campaigns going back to the early 1900s [have been] indoctrinating us with that messaging. They told us how big a diamond is equals how much someone loves or cares about you. But then if you turn it on its head: If I care about the earth and world around me how does what I get with that symbol represent my values?”
--Gwyneth Borden
Photography by Smeeta Mahanti
In her civic life, she’s a former Planning Commissioner for the City and County of San Francisco and currently chairs the Board of Directors for San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.
“Working on the half-cent sales tax, which is funding transportation, is a very tangible thing I was able to contribute,” she says of her work on Prop K, which generates around $100 million annually for SF’s transportation. It’s an issue that will need to be reworked in a post-COVID world. “The transportation world is going to be making very difficult decisions in the next couple years as we have been really down with revenues and are going to have to make some tough choices.”
While she’s still heavily consulted in both of those industries, for now, she’s spending the bulk of her time working to revolutionize the diamond world by setting up the public policy strategy for the Diamond Foundry, which was founded by solar entrepreneurs who believe in using cleantech to advance society.
Photography by Smeeta Mahanti
“Part of my role at Diamond Foundry really is introducing people to lab-grown diamonds. While there’s a greater public awareness, it’s not widespread. And for politicians it’s certainly not an issue that’s been debated in Congress,” says Borden, who admits she was proposed to with a classic Tiffany’s ring and says she was “never one of those girls that was like, ‘I need a three carat diamond.’” In a way, her past has helped her relate to a topic that many people give little thought about.
“I saw the movie Blood Diamond and I thought a little about it then,” she says referring to the political thriller starring DiCaprio that’s set during the Sierra Leone Civil War and spotlights the exploitive diamond mining industry. “But just thinking how pervasive of a symbol that diamonds have become of love and in a world of today where we care about our climate and we care about social and racial justice, [we have] to take a closer look at an industry that basically helped create Apartheid in South Africa, helped to fund wars and cause civil discourse, caused loss of water and land for people indigenous to Africa.”
It’s hard to not feel convinced already, but she continues:
“Why do we use it as a symbol of love? Because for years marketing campaigns going back to the early 1900s [have been] indoctrinating us with that messaging. They told us how big a diamond is equals how much someone loves or cares about you,” says Borden, barely taking a breath. “But then if you turn it on its head: If I care about the earth and world around me how does what I get with that symbol represent my values?”
It’s easy to see why she’s a master at what she does. But while she speaks with the convincing fluidity of any good politician, Borden insists she prefers to stay behind the scenes.
“Before people just heard ‘Defund the police’ or ‘Blue lives Matter,’ but they never understood what the more complex issues are. And as people became more educated they could advocate for themselves for better outcomes.”
-Gwyneth Borden
Photography by Smeeta Mahanti
“I did run for the Bart Board in 2016 and I did not win. While I enjoyed some of the process I decided I don’t want to ever do that again,” she says. “Working on public policy in the way you can as an advocate for a company or an issue can be much more more effective than actually being a politician.”