Traci Lee is an award-winning digital leader with expertise in content strategy, journalism, and audio/video production. Her work focuses on building bridges between digital and legacy media platforms in order to reach audiences wherever they are – from NBC News, where she cultivated space to amplify underrepresented voices, to Sony Pictures Television, where she led strategies that significantly increased organic engagement and audiences across social and digital channels for the studio's highest-grossing and longest-running syndicated programs. She is currently the Director of Social at E! News.
As the Emerging Platforms Director at Gannett and the USA TODAY Network, Traci led experimentation and new initiatives around social video; and as the Director of Digital Strategy, Growth & Insights for Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, she focused on supporting the shows’ marketing efforts by boosting organic reach and engagement across site, social, and email platforms. Her strategies helped lead to the Jeopardy! YouTube channel’s all-time highest click-through rates, increased time spent on Jeopardy.com, and doubled the growth rate of the Wheel of Fortune Instagram audience. At The Walt Disney Company, she drove monetization and revenue growth for digital news and entertainment properties by innovating ad strategies in the FAST space and optimizing e-commerce operations, leading to higher revenue through increased commission rates from e-commerce affiliates.
Prior to working in entertainment, Traci oversaw NBC Asian America at NBC News, which included managing a daily editorial calendar (assigning, editing, writing), recruiting and building relationships with dozens of global freelancers, and serving as supervising producer on award-winning web series and documentaries that have screened at film festivals across the country. Under her direction, NBC News became the leading national news source covering Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.
Traci’s work experience includes launching MSNBC.com, the cable channel’s first standalone news website, in 2012; working with anchors and reporters to build social media profiles, develop strategies for effectively using digital platforms, and engage audiences through digital media; reporting and blogging about culture, politics, and breaking news for MSNBC and NBC News throughout multiple global events, election cycles, and live moments (including the Olympics and Oscars); and teaching and mentoring students at USC’s Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism.
Outside of journalism, she has freelanced as a media consultant and digital strategist specializing in social media and audience engagement, newsroom operations, diversity and inclusion, and podcast production, with clients ranging from The Ankler to The Poynter Institute. Traci also produced and co-hosted Dawson’s Speak: A Podcast About Dawson’s Creek weekly from 2017-2020.
Recognition for Traci’s work includes: first place in Human Interest Features at the Southern California Journalism Awards (from the LA Press Club), the New Media Broadcast Executive Award by the the Multicultural Media Correspondents Association, and the Leadership Diversity Award from the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA, where she also serves as a mentor).
Her bylines have appeared in Teen Vogue, HuffPost, Variety, The Cut, and Bustle. She is also an outspoken advocate for alopecia awareness and has been a youth mentor for the National Alopecia Awareness Foundation and for the Children’s Alopecia Project.