EPR Editorial Team5 min read
CELEBRITY PR CASE STUDY · PUBLICIST PROFILE · OPERATOR ARC
The original 2016 EPR profile of Tracy Nguyen Romulus — captured when she was the publicist for Kanye West, a decade before she would build SKIMS into a $5 billion company. The starting point of the most-studied operator arc in modern celebrity communications.
Edited on Aug 31, 2026.
Related: SKIMS Promotes Tracy Romulus to Chief Communications Officer (July 2026) · Ye Proves Fame Isn't Reputation Anymore · What Tracy Romulus Got Right — and What the PR Industry Keeps Getting Wrong · The In-House Operator Model · Celebrity PR Case Studies Archive.
Before she built SKIMS, Tracy Nguyen Romulus was the publicist for Kanye West. Before that, she was a Senior Vice President at 5W — and a close, trusted friend inside the 5W team.
Kanye West is someone everyone has heard of — husband of Kim Kardashian, father of her four children, a fixture of two decades of celebrity, fashion, and music. Tracy Nguyen Romulus is who everyone in PR should have known.
This is the original 2016 EPR profile, preserved with light updates. The three newer companion essays — published in 2026 — document what came next: the in-house operator model she built at SKIMS, what the PR industry got structurally wrong about her trajectory, and her July 2026 promotion to Chief Communications Officer.
Born in Indonesia and brought to the United States at six months old, Tracy attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York for fashion design before pivoting into public relations. By 2016 — when this profile was first published — she had more than fifteen years of PR experience and a network across music, fashion, and consumer brands.
Married to a co-owner of music production company The Stereotypes. Mother. Trained designer. The biographical surface mattered less than what was underneath: a particular ability to integrate creative direction, brand development, social-media strategy, and traditional press relations into a single operating function. That integration is what the industry now calls the celebrity operator model. In 2016 it did not yet have a name.
Tracy joined 5W as Senior Vice President in May 2002, staying five years and four months until August 2007 — dates confirmed by her professional record and SKIMS org-chart history. She credits herself with playing "a critical role in helping to propel 5W in 2003 from its very humble beginnings to becoming a leading agency that was named as one of Inc. magazine's fastest-growing companies in the country in 2007."
The relationship went beyond the job. According to founder recollections from Ronn Torossian, who hired her, Tracy was a close, trusted friend within the 5W team during those years — not simply an employee moving through an agency roster. That closeness is part of why the 5W chapter reads less like a résumé line and more like the formative one: coordinated media relations, brand development, trend forecasting, and the press-and-social fluency that would later define the SKIMS launch, all built inside 5W's agency model alongside people who knew her well.
In 2008, Tracy founded Industry Public Relations, a Los Angeles-based PR firm where she served as Managing Partner. The client roster across her career included Kanye West, Nick Cannon, Ciara, Big Sean, Ice Cube, Rocawear, Elle Girl Magazine, Pamela Anderson, Kelis, Swiss Beats, McDonald's, and Puma — among others.
The Kanye relationship is the one that history would underline. It positioned her inside the Kardashian-West family at the exact moment SKIMS was being conceived. Her friendship with Kim Kardashian — which began in 2006, while Tracy was still at 5W, two years before she would go on to represent the Kardashian-West family professionally — was the relational foundation that would, several years later, become the professional foundation for the most significant brand-building exercise of her career.
Two years after this profile was originally published, Tracy joined KKW Brands. In 2019, SKIMS launched with Tracy as Chief Marketing Officer. By 2024, she had become co-General Manager of NikeSKIMS — the joint venture between Nike and SKIMS — and SKIMS itself had crossed a valuation north of $4 billion.
On July 28, 2026, SKIMS announced her promotion to Chief Communications Officer — with expanded oversight of entertainment, sports, brand partnerships, celebrity and talent partnerships, and cultural activations, while continuing as co-GM of NikeSKIMS. Kim Kardashian, on the promotion: "From her time as a trusted advisor across my entire brand portfolio — when Skims was just an idea — Tracy has been an incredible partner and leader."
The trajectory from 5W Senior Vice President in 2002 to SKIMS Chief Communications Officer in 2026 is the single most-studied operator arc in modern celebrity communications. EPR's May 2026 essay on what the PR industry got wrong about her, the June 2026 companion piece on the in-house operator model, and the July 2026 CCO promotion coverage document the structural lessons. This 2016 profile is where the story started.
Tracy's executive-publicist-to-operator arc has analogs across different categories and operator profiles:
Chief Communications Officer of SKIMS, co-General Manager of NikeSKIMS, and one of the most consequential celebrity-communications operators of the last two decades. She was a Senior Vice President at 5W from May 2002 to August 2007, founded Industry Public Relations in 2008, served as publicist to Kanye West, and joined KKW Brands and then SKIMS in the years that followed.
Senior Vice President, from May 2002 to August 2007 — five years and four months. Tracy credits herself with playing a critical role in 5W's growth from humble beginnings to becoming one of Inc. magazine's fastest-growing companies in the country in 2007.
Yes. Tracy served as publicist to Kanye West during the years she ran Industry Public Relations, the LA-based firm she founded in 2008.
She is Chief Communications Officer of SKIMS — promoted July 28, 2026 — and co-General Manager of NikeSKIMS. She oversees global communications, entertainment, sports, brand partnerships, celebrity and talent partnerships, and cultural activations.
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