Even in the dazzlingly postmodern city of Dubai, where glass skyscrapers rise out of the desert alongside ancient mosques, and khaki-clad tourists blend in seamlessly with robed crowds of orthodox Muslims, finding a woman in the boardroom is still somewhat of a rarity.

Especially a woman in her twenties. Who just happens to bear the title of chief executive.

For Noora Jamsheer, the youngest woman ever to be appointed CEO of a financial exchange, the road to that lofty perch was not paved with gold, but with diamonds.

At 28, the former portfolio manager became head of the Dubai Diamond Exchange, the Arab world’s first diamond bourse, having proven her mettle in helping build its business from the ground up and, ultimately, gaining international recognition for her efforts to halt the flow of conflict diamonds from war-torn parts of Africa into the United Arab Emirates. (Conflict diamonds, typically mined in war zones, are often illegally sold to fund the purchase of weapons or contraband.)

“Coming from the investment banking world, I really didn’t know anything about diamonds,” she says. “But our goal was to build this world-class exchange and the more I learned about them, the way they are traded and the questions of ethics and morality involved, the more I realized this job could be even more exciting than investment banking.”

As founding chief executive of the DDE, launched in March 2004 by the government-owned Dubai Multi Commodities Centre, Jamsheer spent three years focused on the transformation of the city’s fledgling diamond market into a multibillion-dollar business that ranked among the planet’s top five diamond exchanges under her purview. Then, in February of this year, she did a most unusual thing: she quit.

Had this happened at any of the big-name exchanges in Chicago, New York or London, the financial community would have looked askance at the desertion of one so young and gifted from such a high station. (Especially one who, as in Jamsheer’s case, opted to leave not for another job, but for the great unknown.)

But in Dubai, a city that’s only just beginning to make its presence felt on the international stage – despite its global aspirations – the incident merely caused a local stir, and the circumstances surrounding Jamsheer’s departure were never revealed.

As it turns out, Jamsheer isn’t the type to make an exit without a plan B. Now 31, she has resurfaced as a self-styled diamond activist, founding Developing Diamonds, a not-for-profit organization with footprints in London, New York and Dubai that aims to fight the spread of conflict diamonds, boost consumer awareness and raise funds to aid nations crippled by the effects of an industry that, all too often, reaps untold fortunes off the backs of the less fortunate.

“I had such a fast-track career that what I thought would probably take me 30 years to do, took me just 10,” Jamsheer says. “I may only be in my 30s, but I am already thinking, ‘What will my legacy be?’ I want to make a difference; I want to leave something behind.”

While putting her entrepreneurial skills to the test with a non-profit may be a far cry from running an exchange, it’s even further removed from Jamsheer’s upbringing in Bahrain, where she lived in the crosshairs of the first Gulf war. “There were always alarms going off and the constant fear of being attacked by Saddam Hussein,” recalls Jamsheer, the eldest of three siblings. “As children, we were trained on how to wear gas masks. It made us all more compassionate about what it’s like to survive in places of conflict.”

Initially interested in becoming an investment banker (Jamsheer’s father was a commodities trader and her mother was a physical education teacher) she attended college in the US, receiving B.A.s in finance, economics and investing at Babson College in 1997, and earned her Masters in criminal justice at Boston University, which came in handy later when she began delving into the shadowy world of conflict diamonds. “The thing about criminals and the criminal mind is that they are always two steps ahead of everybody, looking for opportunities and looking for an edge,” Jamsheer says. “They’re actually amazing businesspeople when you think about it.”

Within six months of graduation, Jamsheer was managing a $50 million portfolio at Bahrain’s Taib Bank and, a year later, trading stocks for Saif Investments (also in Bahrain). After that, she spent about a year at HSBC PLC’s Middle East financial services team, joining in 2002. After that, she became accounting and finance manager at the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre before nailing the job of CEO at the DDE in 2005.

“I think being a young woman may have actually helped me get that job,” says Jamsheer, who became a certified diamond grader while working at the exchange. “I am of petite size, generally soft-spoken and I don’t threaten the male dominance. That, of course, can be a double-edged sword, but if you use it to your advantage, it can also allow you to move among your superiors easily.”

From the start, Jamsheer had many boosters, says Eli Izhakoff, president of the World Federation of Diamond Bourses, a New York-based international trade organization for the diamond industry with ties to the DDE.

“It’s very rare in the Arab world to see a woman in that position, and in the diamond industry, we don’t embrace people too quickly,” he says. “But Noora made a great impact. She’s a tough, principled woman, but she also has this automatic, brilliant smile that got her into many places. And she learns very, very fast.”

Sue Saarnio, a special advisor on conflict diamonds to the US State Department in Washington who met Jamsheer at a diamond industry conference in Moscow in 2005, says the DDE’s CEO also used her clout to provide financial assistance to parts of Africa that urgently needed it.

“We were getting ready to open a diamond-evaluation center in Monrovia,” Saarnio recalls. “It needed sieves and scales and measuring devices and it literally had nothing – the copper wiring had even been ripped out of the walls.” Jamsheer arranged for the DDE to help foot the tab for supplies to the center, which opened last spring. (The importance of diamond-evaluation centers cannot be understated, as it allows diamond-exporting nations to ascertain the full value of their stones before selling them to corporations that might otherwise exploit them.)

During her tenure at the DDE, Jamsheer mainly concentrated on bringing the exchange in line with the Kimberley Process, an international certification scheme established in 2003 that seeks to verify the origins of diamonds to ensure they are fairly traded and conflict-free. The KP, named for a meeting of diamond producers in Kimberley, South Africa, in 2000, has one major flaw: It is largely self-enforced by its dozens of participating diamond-producing and -consuming nations. As a result, some follow its rules to the letter, while others simply pay lip service for the commercial advantage of the KP’s stamp of approval. (The KP’s 70-plus members are barred from trading diamonds with non-members like Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast, alleged havens for conflict diamonds.)

The repeated clash of commercial interests with the humanitarian goals of the KP eventually became a problem for Jamsheer at the DDE.

“In July 2006 and again in November of the same year, we received and later released into the market two shipments of rough diamonds that we couldn’t guarantee were not conflict diamonds,” Jamsheer says, recalling the events that led her to resign. Both shipments arrived with certificates of provenance that were highly irregular in appearance – a telltale sign of forgery. “The first time it happened, I was willing to believe it was a mistake. But the second time, it was clear to me that it wasn’t. When I spoke up, I was basically told, ‘Let it go.’”

While Jamsheer’s primary concern was that the incidents might ruin the DDE’s reputation, her superiors, including exchange chairman David Rutledge, were more worried that the exchange might lose business to competitors by holding up shipments, she says.

Rutledge has declined to comment, but Ameen Rashid, general counsel and executive director for KP affairs at the DDE’s parent company, the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre, says the exchange analyzed the shipments prior to release and that while the accompanying certificates were flawed, Ghana, the exporting country in both cases, verified the origins of the diamonds as KP-compliant. “We believe we acted correctly throughout, and if the KP still has questions with these two shipments, we would be very happy to answer any inquiries,” he says.

In a December 2006 report, the U.N. Security Council, which earlier that year had praised Jamsheer’s actions in suspending the shipments, noted that it was “surprised” that the DDE “released suspect Ghanaian diamonds to the importer without conducting a proper investigation.” Jamsheer says the shipments were only worth about $500,000 each – peanuts compared to the typical multimillion-dollar cargo. Rashid says the release of the shipments weren’t politically motivated and that the DDE has invited a KP delegation to visit Dubai to review the matter.

For Jamsheer, an observant Muslim who identified strongly with the KP’s goals, it seemed clear she would have to strike out on her own if she wanted to remain true to her values. “I loved my job, but I didn’t want any blood on my hands,” she says. “I wanted to help people who were suffering, not make things worse for them. That was the driving force behind Developing Diamonds.”

Tapping into her networks as an investment banker, Jamsheer began contacting Bahrain companies last April that she knew had large charity budgets, raising about $50,000 in start-up funds. By registering her non-profit online (instead of hiring a lawyer) and researching the real estate market for low-priced office space, Jamsheer says she’s managed to get by on a shoestring budget. “When you begin, it’s hard, because there’s that devil deep inside you that wonders, ‘What if this doesn’t work?’” she says. “But in finance, returns don’t come without risk; and the higher the risk, the higher the returns.”

Jamsheer even hired a half-dozen staffers to help her prepare for her next act: setting up a battery of designer-jewelry auctions next year that will raise a targeted $100,000 in funds for aid to Africa.

“Working with a Lebanese designer, we’ll be creating a limited-quantity piece called the Tear of Hope, which will be a 2- or 3-karat diamond ring set in rubies and white gold or platinum that can flip into a pendant,” Jamsheer says. Five hundred to 1,000 of the pieces will be made with prices starting at about $2,500 each. Every piece will be accompanied by a real-life account of one African’s struggle to survive.

“The idea is to connect everybody in a positive way with each another,” she says. “The thing about giving and donations is that a lot of people have that good feeling when they give to charity, but then they lose track of what actually happens to that money. We want to let our contributors know exactly where it goes.”

Jamsheer says she will probably hold daytime auctions in New York and London, as well as in cities in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, but hasn’t set any dates yet. She hopes to use the funds for aid to Sierra Leone, which, she says, is now stable enough to benefit from assistance.

Under another program Jamsheer is planning to begin later this year, she will encourage Africans in conflict-stricken regions to document what is happening to them and their villages by outfitting them with cameras and giving them a crash-course in photojournalism. “Cameras don’t cost very much and we can help them record their experiences through pictures, which we can show the rest of the world,” Jamsheer says, noting that staging gallery exhibits or even selling the photos are possibilities. “Plus, these people will learn a skill they can use. We have already found companies like Sony that are willing to donate the equipment, which takes a lot of the financial strain off us. We have even found airlines that will help by donating miles so we can travel to these areas.”

Jamsheer concedes that while starting Developing Diamonds took a hefty dose of courage, she believes anyone who’s determined enough – and has the organizational prowess – can do the same.

“This is not a golden opportunity that I had and no one else can do,” she says. “Anyone can do it. We live in a highly financial and materialistic world, but many of these companies are willing to give back and you can tap into that.”

Despite Jamsheer’s many close encounters with diamonds (her birthstone, coincidentally, happens to be a diamond) she says that after seeing the less glamorous side of the industry, she’s satisfied these days with just admiring her favorite gemstones from afar. This, she adds, is not just because her taste has outstripped her budget.

“Diamonds have this natural charisma to them – they attract people from a distance, but that’s the reason for this knowledge gap,” says Jamsheer. “I love diamonds. My engagement ring is a diamond. But at the end of the day, if given the money and the choice, I would probably buy a PDA.”