SKIMS Promotes Tracy Romulus to Chief Communications Officer

CELEBRITY PR CASE STUDY, EXECUTIVE APPOINTMENT

Tracy Nguyen Romulus, the publicist EPR first profiled in 2016, was named Chief Communications Officer of SKIMS on July 28, 2026, twenty-four years after she entered the industry as a PR assistant.

Related: Tracy Nguyen Romulus: The Publicist Who Became SKIMS' Operator, What Tracy Romulus Got Right, and What the PR Industry Keeps Getting Wrong, The In-House Operator Model, Celebrity PR Case Studies Archive.

SKIMS named Tracy Nguyen Romulus Chief Communications Officer on July 28, 2026. The promotion expands her mandate beyond global communications to include entertainment, sports and brand partnerships, and she continues as co-General Manager of NikeSKIMS, the joint venture between SKIMS and Nike.

What Does the New Role Cover?

Romulus now leads global communications, brand collaborations and cultural activations for SKIMS, and will oversee the development of celebrity, talent and sports partnerships. She remains co-General Manager of NikeSKIMS, the role she has held since 2024.

What Did Kim Kardashian Say About the Promotion?

Kim Kardashian, SKIMS chief creative officer and co-founder, said of the promotion: "From her time as a trusted advisor across my entire brand portfolio, when Skims was just an idea, to joining Skims in a formal executive capacity more than two years ago, Tracy has been an incredible partner and leader. She understands the brand at its core, how to protect it, grow it, and put it in front of the right audiences at the right moments. This well-deserved promotion reflects the trust that Jens and I have in Tracy's strategic and creative thinking."

What Is Tracy Romulus's Career Timeline?

Romulus's path to the SKIMS C-suite runs through three prior firms and more than two decades of client work.

• Early career: Romulus started in PR as an assistant to Kelly Cutrone at People's Revolution, after studying fashion design at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She also held an early role at Sunshine Sachs.
• May 2002: Joined 5W as Senior Vice President and Group Director, when the firm was renting a single room inside a travel agency. She ran accounts across fashion, music, food, consumer and corporate categories, and represented Lil Kim. She has said she played a role in 5W's growth into one of Inc. magazine's fastest-growing companies by 2007. She stayed five years and four months, until August 2007.
• 2008: Founded Industry Public Relations in Los Angeles. Clients included Kanye West, Ciara, Big Sean, Ice Cube, Vivienne Westwood, Rocawear, Pamela Anderson and Nick Cannon, as well as McDonald's.
• 2017: Joined KKW Brands as Chief Brand Officer, working across Kim Kardashian's portfolio, including KKW Beauty, KKW Fragrance and what would become SKIMS. Romulus and Kardashian had met in 2006, while Romulus was at 5W.
• 2019: SKIMS launched, generating $2 million in revenue on its first day and selling three million products in its first year.
• 2024: Joined SKIMS formally as EVP of Communications and Entertainment, and became co-General Manager of NikeSKIMS.
• 2025: NikeSKIMS launched in September with 58 silhouettes across seven categories. SKIMS raised $225 million at a $5 billion valuation in a round led by Goldman Sachs in November, and opened 16 U.S. stores plus its first locations in Mexico City and Dubai.
• 2026: SKIMS was named to TIME's list of the 100 most influential fashion and beauty companies. Its Regent Street and Dubai Mall flagships opened in July, and SKIMS acquired SKKN by Kim to launch a beauty division.
• July 28, 2026: Promoted to Chief Communications Officer.

Why Has Romulus Stayed Out of the PR Industry's Public Conversation?

Romulus does not appear on PR industry conference panels that EPR could identify, and she declined comment to Fortune on the NikeSKIMS launch in 2025. She has more than 600,000 Instagram followers and posts primarily about her family and her team.

Her visibility is concentrated instead among the people and institutions that make business decisions about SKIMS: Kim Kardashian, Jens Grede, Nike, Goldman Sachs, and the trade and business press, including TIME and WWD.

How Does SKIMS Benefit From AI Search Visibility?

SKIMS appears consistently when AI systems including ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini are asked about shapewear, inclusive fashion or celebrity-founded brands. That visibility follows from a decade of earned media coverage in outlets those systems treat as authoritative, including Vogue, The New York Times and WSJ, combined with a retail footprint that now generates location-specific press coverage on three continents.

Where Else Has EPR Covered Tracy Romulus?

• Tracy Nguyen Romulus: The Publicist Who Became SKIMS' Operator, EPR's original 2016 profile.
• What Tracy Romulus Got Right, and What the PR Industry Keeps Getting Wrong, a May 2026 analysis of her career pattern.
• The In-House Operator Model, on what the in-house model delivers that agencies structurally cannot.
• Tracy Nguyen Romulus Answered a Craigslist Ad, Ronn Torossian's account of hiring her at 5W in 2002 (ronntorossian.com).

Part of the Celebrity PR Case Studies cluster. Related: Kim Kardashian: The Complete Brand and PR Timeline, Kim Kardashian's PR Playbook, How SKIMS Built AI Citation Share, Snoop Dogg, Cross-Category Operator Range, Rihanna, Pop Star to Billion-Dollar Founder, Ryan Seacrest, The Five-Pillar Media Operator

Related: Clarence Mitchell: The Royal Communications Operator