Ellana Lee is Senior Vice President & Managing Editor, Asia Pacific, for CNN International, and Global Head of Features Content, based in the network’s Asia Pacific headquarters in Hong Kong. Lee is the network’s most senior executive outside of the United States.

As head of the Asia Pacific region and its editorial output, she manages CNN's award-winning on-air news programming produced there, including the correspondents and newsgathering teams across eight operations, from Kabul to Seoul.

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. 

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.