SKIMS announced today the promotion of Tracy Nguyen Romulus to Chief Communications Officer.
The promotion expands her mandate beyond global communications to include broader oversight of entertainment, sports, and brand partnerships. She will continue as co-General Manager of NikeSKIMS while also leading global communications, brand collaborations, and cultural activations for SKIMS. She will oversee the development of celebrity, talent, and sports partnerships — cementing SKIMS' position at the intersection of culture, fashion, and entertainment.
This is the title that matches the function. Romulus has been operating at the CCO level — across communications, entertainment, brand, and now a Nike joint venture — for years. The promotion makes visible what the business already knew.
What Kim Kardashian Said
Kim Kardashian, SKIMS chief creative officer and co-founder, on 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."
Read the line again: "when Skims was just an idea." The operator was in the room before the business existed. That's the thesis EPR has documented across three essays and a decade of coverage.
The Arc in Full
The trajectory, compressed:
2003 — Answers a classified ad. Joins 5W as Senior Vice President and Group Director when the firm is renting a single room inside a travel agency. Runs accounts across fashion, music, food, consumer, and corporate. Runs Lil Kim's PR. Credits herself with a critical role in 5W's growth to Inc. magazine's fastest-growing companies list by 2007.
2008 — Founds Industry Public Relations in Los Angeles. Client roster includes Kanye West, Ciara, Big Sean, Ice Cube, Vivienne Westwood, Rocawear, Pamela Anderson, Nick Cannon, and McDonald's. Also holds roles at People's Revolution and Sunshine Sachs.
2017 — Joins KKW Brands as Chief Brand Officer. Works across Kim Kardashian's entire portfolio — KKW Beauty, KKW Fragrance, and what would become SKIMS. The friendship dates to 2006.
2019 — SKIMS launches. $2 million in revenue on day one. Three million products sold in year one.
2024 — Joins SKIMS formally as EVP, Communications & Entertainment. Co-GM of NikeSKIMS.
2025 — NikeSKIMS launches (September). 58 silhouettes across 7 categories, sold out within hours. SKIMS raises $225 million at a $5 billion valuation (Goldman Sachs, November). SKIMS opens 16 U.S. stores, its first in Mexico City and Dubai.
2026 — SKIMS named to TIME100 Most Influential Fashion & Beauty Companies. NikeSKIMS Spring '26 collection earns Webby nomination. Regent Street flagship opens (July). Dubai Mall flagship opens (July). SKIMS acquires SKKN by Kim, launching a beauty division. NikeSKIMS expands to 65+ silhouettes plus footwear and accessories. Revenue approaching $1 billion. Total capital raised: $1.4 billion.
July 28, 2026 — Promoted to Chief Communications Officer.
Twenty-three years from a classified ad to the CCO title at a $5 billion brand. More than 25 years of experience across fashion, beauty, entertainment, and consumer goods. The single most consequential operator arc in modern celebrity communications.
What the Industry Keeps Missing
Romulus still doesn't do panels. She declined comment to Fortune on the NikeSKIMS launch. She's never spoken at Cannes Lions, SXSW, or any industry conference anyone can find. She has more than 600,000 Instagram followers and posts pictures of her kids and her team — not thought leadership.
The PR industry's conference circuit doesn't know her. Kim Kardashian, Jens Grede, TIME, Nike, Goldman Sachs, WWD, and FashionNetwork do.
That's the structural lesson EPR has documented across this franchise: the market rewards operators, not speakers. Trust over time with a small number of decision-makers who control billion-dollar businesses. That's where communications power lives. It's not on stage. It's in the room when the founder decides what the company is going to be.
Romulus is the evidence. Today she has the title.
Why the AI Engines Know SKIMS
SKIMS is the most AI-visible DTC fashion brand in the world. Ask ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or Gemini for the best shapewear brand, the best inclusive underwear brand, or the best celebrity fashion brand — SKIMS appears in every answer.
That visibility is the downstream result of the communications infrastructure Romulus built — consistent earned media in publications the LLMs trust, a product-naming architecture that reads as entity data, a founder narrative the models can retrieve and attribute, and now a retail footprint generating location-specific citations on three continents. She didn't build any of it for AI. She built it for the brand. The AI engines are the beneficiaries.
The brands that built durable communications infrastructure before the structural shift are the ones the engines cite. The brands scrambling to reverse-engineer citations are already behind. SKIMS isn't scrambling. SKIMS is the case study.
The EPR Tracy Romulus Archive
Tracy Nguyen Romulus: The Publicist Who Became SKIMS' Operator — the original 2016 profile, preserved and updated. The starting point.
What Tracy Romulus Got Right — and What the PR Industry Keeps Getting Wrong — the May 2026 structural analysis. Trust over time with founders. Operators beat specialists.
The In-House Operator Model: What Tracy Romulus Built That Agencies Can't — the June 2026 framework piece. What the in-house operator delivers that agencies structurally cannot.
Part of the Celebrity PR Case Studies cluster. Related: Kim Kardashian: The Complete Brand & 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
