Christine Wei-li Lee

Assistant Dean, Chief Marketing Communications Officer

Christine Wei-li Lee is Assistant Dean and Chief Marketing Communications Officer of the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. She serves as the school’s chief spokesperson and oversees its external and internal marketing and communications strategies and programs.

Trained as a journalist, Lee brings three decades of global marketing communications, public affairs, political campaigns and crisis management experience. She has led advertising and public relations initiatives at major agencies, as well as in-house communications teams at topnotch corporations. POLITICO has called Lee a “veteran communications strategist.”

Before joining UCLA Samueli in 2019 as Executive Director of Communications, Lee served as head of West Coast PR for the international law firm Covington & Burling, where she spearheaded creative and effective media-relations and public-relations programs. Lee was Founding Partner and Managing Director of The Garry South Group, a California-based public affairs and public relations firm, where she guided C-suite clients, as well as state and federal political candidates, in all aspects of communications strategy.

Prior to establishing her own firm, Lee was recruited by leading global executive-search firm Korn Ferry International as its Director of Marketing Communications. Based in the company’s Los Angeles headquarters, Lee oversaw strategic communications for the firm’s then 14 offices in 10 Pacific Rim countries and traveled extensively to Asia and Australasia (Australia and New Zealand.)

In addition to her extensive experience in corporate marketing communications, Lee also has had a long career working in politics and government, including an appointment by California Gov. Gray Davis as a Commissioner on the California State World Trade Commission. She served as Senior Advisor to Gov. Davis on his lieutenant gubernatorial and two gubernatorial campaigns. At the 1996 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Lee served as a foreign press liaison, managing international media during prime-time floor coverage of President Bill Clinton’s acceptance speech.

Lee holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University in New York, where she received the Carlotta di Cagno and Davide di Cagno Hagen Award for best investigative story on environmental or human rights issues. She received a B.A. in communication studies from UCLA, earning magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa honors. A native of Taiwan, Lee is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and is well-versed in intersectional communication to promote cultural awareness.