SKIMS Names Kisha Maldonado-Madrid VP of Influencer

CELEBRITY PR CASE STUDY, EXECUTIVE APPOINTMENT

Kisha Maldonado-Madrid was named VP of Influencer at SKIMS, PR Week reported in August 2026. Her path there runs through the same two firms as Tracy Nguyen Romulus, SKIMS' Chief Communications Officer — not sequentially, but at the same time, twice over, across more than a decade.

Related: SKIMS Promotes Tracy Romulus to Chief Communications Officer, What Tracy Romulus Got Right, The In-House Operator Model, Celebrity PR Case Studies Archive.

SKIMS named Kisha Maldonado-Madrid VP of Influencer, PR Week reported in August 2026, adding a second senior communications hire whose career runs directly through the same agencies as Tracy Nguyen Romulus, the brand's Chief Communications Officer.

Who Is Kisha Maldonado-Madrid?

Maldonado-Madrid is a two-decade communications and influencer-marketing executive, most recently founder and CEO of Cruz Control Digital, a Los Angeles creator-marketing agency. Before founding it, she served as Chief Operating Officer of Kourtney Kardashian's Poosh in 2021 and Vice President of Influencer Marketing at Cashmere Agency from 2019 to 2021, where a July 2019 PRNewswire announcement called her a "20-year industry expert" who had worked with brands including YouTube, Macy's, Evian Natural Spring Water, Hennessy and Nickelodeon.

When Did She and Tracy Nguyen Romulus First Overlap, at 5W?

Maldonado-Madrid was Vice President at 5W Public Relations from February 2005 to June 2010, based in New York. Tracy Nguyen Romulus was Senior Vice President and Group Director at 5W from May 2002 to August 2007, also out of the New York office. For roughly two and a half years — February 2005 through August 2007 — the two women held senior titles at the same firm, in the same city, on the same roster.

That roster, under Romulus, ran through celebrity and corporate accounts at once: Lil Kim, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, BET, Microsoft, McDonald's and Evian Natural Spring Water, according to Ronn Torossian's own account of hiring Romulus in 2002 and EPR's prior reporting on her career. Maldonado-Madrid's own 5W record describes managing "an array of highly respected international and domestic clients" and leading multiple account teams — work consistent with running pieces of that same roster, including its celebrity wing, during the years their tenures overlapped. 5W in that period had roughly 90 employees handling music, fashion, consumer and corporate accounts out of one Midtown office — small enough that two VPs would have been working in close proximity, not in separate silos.

When Did They Overlap Again, at Industry Public Relations?

Maldonado-Madrid went on to serve as Partner at Industry Public Relations, the Los Angeles firm Romulus founded in 2008, from September 2011 to December 2016 — a run that falls entirely inside Romulus's decade as Managing Partner there (2007 to 2017). This overlap isn't just dates and geography: Maldonado-Madrid's own Industry PR record lists Ice Cube as a client, the same name that appears on Romulus's Industry PR roster in EPR's earlier coverage. Her record also credits her with developing integrated strategy for retailer Shiekh Shoes and media outlet Complex, engineering a 70% social-follower increase for a client campaign, organizing the private influencer event that helped launch Rihanna's FENTY sneaker with Puma, and managing a four-person account team.

Across roughly fifteen years and two firms, the two women ran 5W's — and later Industry PR's — celebrity and influencer accounts together, not as a coincidence of career timing but as overlapping colleagues under the same roof both times.

What Does This Mean for SKIMS?

Two of SKIMS' most senior communications and influencer executives — its Chief Communications Officer and its new VP of Influencer — spent more than a decade combined working the same agency rosters before either one touched the SKIMS business. The in-house operator model EPR has previously described in Romulus's case, where founder trust is built over years rather than campaigns, extends in Maldonado-Madrid's hire to the working relationships she brought in with her: SKIMS didn't just hire an influencer-marketing veteran, it hired someone whose working history with its own CCO predates SKIMS' founding by more than a decade.

What Has Tracy Nguyen Romulus Said About the Kind of Team She Builds?

Romulus has described what she values in the people she works alongside in terms that match this pattern: she has said the most fulfilling part of her work is the caliber and dedication of the team around her, not any single campaign. She rarely gives interviews and did not respond to EPR's request for comment on Maldonado-Madrid's SKIMS hire specifically.

What Is Her Role at SKIMS?

VP of Influencer, per PR Week's August 2026 report.