Tarang Amin, the CEO of E.l.f. Beauty, has been named the Modern CEO of the Year for 2024, according to Inc. This award recognizes Amin’s achievements as an executive and his upholding of the traits and values that the Modern CEO newsletter covers, including the promotion of workplace equity.
While Amin’s award makes him a standout, Modern CEO readers have written to nominate other prominent executives with exceptional leadership qualities.
Amin’s Initiatives for Diversity and Equity
Actions that saw Tarang Amin awarded the Modern CEO of the Year honor include initiatives promoting diversity within corporate boards. One of these was E.l.f.’s “Change the Board Game” campaign. The E.l.f. company itself has made remarkable strives within its own board diversity.
“I’m proud to say that our board has 78 percent women and 44 percent diverse representation,” Amin stated. “We’ve seen the power in our own business of having that type of representation, but we don’t want to be the only company.”
In another effort to drive board diversity, E.l.f. grabbed headlines with the “So Many Dicks” research initiative, which revealed that there are more men with the names Richard, Rich, Rick, or Dick (the many variations of the “Dick” nickname) on company boards within the United States than there are entire categories of underrepresented candidates.
Amin made further comments on this initiative while pointing to the humorous tone of the research. “There’s nothing wrong with being a Richard or a Dick,” he said. “I just want to make room for everyone else.”
Dubitsky’s Promotion of a Positive Work Environment
During Modern CEO’s search for the 2024 Modern CEO of the Year, the newsletter encouraged readers to nominate other chief executives who have made an impact through their leadership. As reported by Fast Company, one of the standouts was Craig Dubitsky, the founder and CEO of the Happy coffee company.
Happy represents one of Dubitsky’s many entrepreneurial projects. However, when he unveiled the coffee company in early 2024, he took a new approach by emphasizing the social impact it would have. He granted an equity stake in the company to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).
Additionally, Dubitsky has garnered a reputation as an exceptional leader, which earned him the nomination. Damon Grimes, a marketing executive at Happy, describes Dubitsky’s leadership style as “infectiously positive.” He states, “Craig’s positive leadership is the reason why I joined him at Happy and why so many others on the team have worked for him for over 12 years.”
Duckett’s Advocacy for Financial Inclusion and Opportunity
Another nominee for Modern CEO of the Year was Thasunda Brown Duckett, the president and CEO of TIAA. Duckett has proven to be an effective business leader, having ranked 14th on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women in Business list, according to Fast Company.
In addition to the major strides she has made in her own career journey, Duckett has used her influence to advocate for greater financial inclusion of underrepresented investors. In her promotion of equity in business, she has publicly encouraged women and people of color to develop skills in AI to achieve better opportunities, as reported by Yahoo Finance.
Jana Rich, the founder of Rich Talent Group, describes how Duckett embodies the best aspects of a modern CEO. “To me, a modern CEO is someone who is extraordinarily capable at the work they do but also leads inclusively and stands for something authentically,” Rich states.
“Not only has she broken barriers, such as becoming the first woman CEO of TIAA or being one of few Black women to lead a Fortune 500 company, but she also uses her position of power to do meaningful work like creating greater financial access for marginalized communities or speaking about diversity and inclusion to inspire others.”
