Executives of the Year: Ekta Chopra

Ekta Chopra, chief technology and AI officer at E.l.f. Beauty, is leading efforts to deploy agentic AI across the company's enterprise, letting employees decide where agents can be most helpful rather than mandating use cases from the top down. Chopra, who took her current role in April after 10 years at E.l.f., said the goal is redesigning jobs around innovation instead of administration, with "the human still in the loop." She framed the push around speed, saying "culture moves at the speed of light" and that brands must capitalize quickly on viral TikTok moments or lose out.

In the ever-evolving beauty industry, speed is everything, says Ekta Chopra https://www.linkedin.com/in/ektachopra , chief technology and AI officer at E.l.f. Beauty https://time.com/collections/time100-companies-2025/7289584/elf-beauty/ . “Culture moves at the speed of light,” says Chopra, who assumed her current role in April after celebrating 10 years at the company. “Things go viral on TikTok, and if you don’t capitalize on that very quickly, you lose out.” To help associates work faster and with fewer speed bumps, Chopra is leading efforts to deploy agentic AI across E.l.f.’s enterprise https://www.fastcompany.com/91596461/ekta-chopra-elf-beauty-pacesetters-2026 . Her approach is decidedly grassroots. Although she and her team are creating the operating models needed for agents to run smoothly and securely, she’s letting employees decide for themselves where agents can be most helpful. “It’s the people closest to the work who should figure out: What is the work agents can do versus the work humans should do?” she says, adding that the goal is redesigning jobs around innovation instead of administration. “The human is still in the loop … All we’re doing is building infrastructure that helps them react more quickly to opportunities.”