Ekta Chopra Is one of TIME’s 2026 Executives of the Year: Tech and Data

In the ever-evolving beauty industry, speed is everything, says Ekta Chopra, chief technology and AI officer at E.l.f. 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. 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.”