tracy romulus successes and pr industry missteps explained
Tracy Nguyen Romulus has held the Chief Communications Officer title at SKIMS since July 28, 2026, and continues as co-General Manager of NikeSKIMS, the joint venture between SKIMS and Nike. Her twenty-four year path from entry-level PR assistant to a $5 billion brand's C-suite illustrates a pattern the PR industry's conference circuit tends to overlook: durable, principal-level trust with a founder outweighs public visibility.
What Is Tracy Romulus's Current Role at SKIMS?
Tracy Nguyen Romulus is Chief Communications Officer of SKIMS, a role she was promoted into on July 28, 2026, after joining the company in 2024 as EVP of Communications and Entertainment. Goldman Sachs valued SKIMS at $5 billion in a $225 million funding round in November 2025. Romulus also serves as co-General Manager of NikeSKIMS, the joint venture with Nike that launched on September 26, 2025.
Romulus rarely gives interviews and declined comment to Fortune on the NikeSKIMS launch in 2025. She has not appeared on a PR industry conference panel that EPR could identify.
What Does Romulus's Career Say About How Communications Power Actually Works?
The PR industry's conference circuit rewards visibility: panels, bylines, LinkedIn commentary. Romulus's trajectory suggests the more consequential form of communications influence is different: sustained, principal-level trust with a small number of founders who control large businesses. That trust is built over years, largely out of public view.
How Did Tracy Romulus Start Her Career?
Romulus came to the United States as an infant, after her mother fled Vietnam; she was born in a refugee camp in Indonesia in December 1979. She enrolled at the Fashion Institute of Technology to study fashion design and switched into public relations within two years, starting as an assistant to Kelly Cutrone at People's Revolution. She has called the experience "a tough love kind of boot camp."
She left People's Revolution for an account-director role advertised in the classifieds, at 5W, then a firm renting a single room inside a travel agency. Romulus was hired on the spot in May 2002. Over the next five years and four months, until August 2007, 5W grew to roughly 90 employees. Romulus rose to Senior Vice President and Group Director, ran Lil Kim's PR, and worked across fashion, music, food, consumer and corporate accounts. Colleagues from that period have described her as a close friend within the 5W team, not only a rising executive.
In 2008, Romulus founded her own boutique agency, Industry Public Relations, and ran it for close to a decade. Its roster included Kanye West, whom EPR profiled her representing in 2016, along with Ciara, Big Sean, Ice Cube, Swizz Beatz, Vivienne Westwood, Rocawear, Pamela Anderson, Nick Cannon and McDonald's. She signed her own clients and owned her own P&L, working at the principal level rather than the staff level.
How Did the Kardashian Relationship Become a Business Relationship?
Romulus met Kim Kardashian in 2006, while she was at 5W. In September 2017, she joined KKW Brands as Chief Brand Officer, before SKIMS existed. That sequence, personal trust established years before the founder had a public business, is the pattern the industry underweights when it evaluates communications talent primarily by media presence.
In 2021, Kanye West publicly criticized Romulus's role in Kardashian's business decisions, a dispute that drew press attention to her position inside the family's operations. Romulus did not respond publicly.
On July 28, 2026, SKIMS promoted Romulus to Chief Communications Officer. Kim Kardashian said of 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."
Where Else Has EPR Covered This Pattern?
Romulus's career is one case study within EPR's coverage of the in-house operator model, in which a communications executive becomes a structural participant in a founder's business rather than an outside vendor. Related profiles on EPR cover the same pattern in other categories:
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
