Ellana Lee is CNN's Group Senior Vice President, General Manager APAC, and Global Head of Productions, overseeing a brand-new team at CNN that will handle all aspects of multi-platform sponsored content at the network alongside her editorial responsibilities.
In a CNN career spanning 25 years, most recently as SVP, Managing Editor Asia Pacific, & Global Head of Features Content, Lee has pioneered its highly successful approach to feature content, including major initiatives such as its award-winning Call to Earth.
Lee is the network’s most senior executive outside of the United States. Lee’s role focuses on developing and producing sponsored content across all platforms, and see the creation of new roles in the United States to strengthen and expand the existing Features team, currently based across Atlanta, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, and London.
As Global Head of Features content across CNN International television and CNN Digital, she is responsible for the partnership between CNN’s international editorial and commercial teams, helping to drive the network’s business outside the United States.
CNN’s features group is an integrated, cross-platform, award-winning creative team, producing more than 1000 hours of premium original programming every year. This encompasses long-form series, documentaries and specials for TV, digital and social platforms across eight production hubs in Hong Kong, London, Abu Dhabi, New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Johannesburg and Miami.
Under Lee’s management, CNN has received a variety of prestigious awards, including five award wins at the Asian Academy Creative Awards in 2018. The Royal Television Society (RTS) awarded CNN the coveted Best News Coverage International prize in 2013 for its reporting of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, and this and other reporting from the region played a key role in CNN International winning the RTS News Channel of the Year in 2013 and 2012. Lee has also received numerous personal accolades, including ContentAsia’s ‘Asia Media Woman of the Year’ in 2018 for her commitment to the news media industry.
Lee was also an integral part of CNN’s coverage of the historic Inter-Korean and the Trump-Kim summits in 2019 and 2018. She has traveled to North Korea several times and in mid-2017 spearheaded an exclusive report called Secret State: Inside North Korea. The 60-minute documentary followed CNN cameras inside the secretive nation and was awarded Best Documentary Program at the Asian Academy Creative Awards in 2018.
In recognition of her leadership position, Lee was named a 'Young Global Leader' by the World Economic Forum and now sits on the board of the Young Global Leaders Foundation. She is an Asia 21 fellow, as awarded by the Asia Society, and is a graduate of Harvard's 'Global Leadership and Public Policy for the 21st Century' Executive Program. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and The Nature Conservancy’s Asia Pacific Council, and sits on the advisory board of The Murrow Centre at Tuft University.
Lee has had a longstanding and accomplished career at CNN, beginning in New York as a producer to help launch the program 'In The Money'. She subsequently worked as a business producer and a senior planning producer, coordinating major events out of the Asia Pacific region.
She holds a Master's degree in Broadcast Journalism from New York University and an undergraduate degree in History and International Relations from Georgetown University.