Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. 

The Modern CEO of the Year isn’t the chief executive of the most valuable company in the world (that would be—for now—Tim Cook, CEO of Apple), nor does the title go to perhaps the most decorated executive of 2024, AMD’s Lisa Su, who has earned “CEO of the Year” nods from Time, Chief Executive magazine, and Barron’s for engineering a turnaround of the semiconductor company.  

Su and Cook are outstanding leaders, but Modern CEO set out to recognize an executive who embodies the traits and values we’ve been covering in this newsletter for the last two years: inclusion, accessibility, humility, and innovation. We solicited reader nominations and talked to executive recruiters and leadership experts—this accolade is more “vibe” than strict methodology—and one name popped up: The inaugural Modern CEO of the Year is E.l.f. Beauty CEO Tarang Amin. 

Under Amin, who joined the beauty brand in 2014, E.l.f. Beauty has reported 23 straight quarters of net sales and market share growth. Recently, Amin told investors the company expects 28% to 30% growth in sales for fiscal 2025. E.l.f. products are especially coveted by young consumers, who appreciate their affordability ($2 lip liners and $6 foundations), wide availability, and vegan........

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