Ronny Totah

Born in Egypt in 1952, Ronny Totah graduated as a Civil Engineer from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale of Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1976 and at that time did probably not intend to achieve this position in the gemstones business.

He nevertheless promptly joined Th. Horovitz & Cie in Geneva, the company founded by the Horovitz brothers and his father in 1968. In 1990, he and Eric Horovitz founded their own company Horovitz & Totah S.A.

Ever since he was active in this business, Mr Totah has constantly shown a deep concern for ethics and for the problems raised by the determination of origins and the treatment of coloured stones. He therefore organised in NY in 1989 an international conference gathering all the main actors from the gem world. On this occasion all the participants requested from the laboratories that meetings should occur regularly in order to establish common standards, thus allowing to reduce these problems.

In 1991 he became a member of the ICA Board of Director as Chairman of the Technical Committee and the Nomenclature Committee for a period of 5 years, joining as well the Board of Director of SSEF in 1990 in which he still plays an active role.

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