Michelle Ye Hee Lee Biography
Michelle Ye Hee Lee is an American journalist who works as the Washington Post’s Tokyo bureau chief. She was previously president of the Asian American Journalists Association.
Michelle Ye Hee Lee Age
Lee was born on 13 June 1988, in Seoul, South Korea. Ye is 35 years old as of June 2023.
Michelle Ye Hee Lee Education
She attended and graduated from the Academy of Our Lady of Guam, an all-girls Catholic high school in Hagåtña. In 2010, she earned a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies and English from Emory University.
Michelle Ye Hee Lee Career
Lee became interested in journalism after attending a Duke University writing camp. She interned with Pacific Daily News at the age of 15 as part of the “VIBE” high-school internship program. She went to and graduated from Hagta’s Academy of Our Lady of Guam, an all-girls Catholic high school. She interned at Creative Loafing, an Atlanta-based publisher of a monthly arts and culture newspaper/magazine, in 2008. She began working as an intern at the Chicago Tribune a year later. In 2010, she earned a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies and English from Emory University. From 2009 to 2010, she was the editor-in-chief of Emory’s student newspaper, The Emory Wheel.
Lee worked as a government accountability reporter for The Arizona Republic after graduating from university, where she covered public money, regulatory gaps, and Arizona state and county politics. Lee and her Arizona Republic colleagues were contenders for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the Yarnell Hill Fire in 2013. She was nominated a finalist for the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists for her investigation on Arizona’s shortcomings in tracking and monitoring homeless sex offenders. In 2014, she joined The Washington Post and began writing for the “Fact Checker,” which grades political claims on a scale of one to four Pinocchios, with one Pinocchio for mild shading of the facts and four Pinocchios for outright lies.
Lee left the fact-checking team in 2017 to work in the Post’s political enterprise and investigations section, where she reported on money and influence in American politics. She covered the 2018 North Korea-US Singapore Summit from Seoul for The Washington Post. Lee is a member of the Investigative Reporters and Editors and has taught students at a local high school as part of the Press Pass Mentors program. She was elected President of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) in 2017, a membership charity dedicated to improving diversity in newsrooms and guaranteeing fair and factual coverage of communities of color. Lee was re-elected to a second term as President of AAJA in August 2020. In December 2020, she was appointed as Tokyo bureau chief of The Washington Post. The assignment carries responsibility of reporting on Japan, North Korea and South Korea.
Michelle Ye Hee Lee Net Worth
Lee has an estimated net worth of 200 thousand dollars.