People rarely change by choice. If they do, it’s usually because of circumstance. A situation reaches a tipping point, forcing a realization that leaves no other option. In other words, they didn’t want to change. They had to change. Before that moment arrives, most people take the path of least resistance because it allows them to avoid the biggest obstacle: themselves. There’s an old fable about a king who places a big boulder in the middle of a road to see what people will do. Most complain about it, choosing to walk around it, grumbling the whole way past. Then one day, a farmer decides to take matters into his own hands. He stops, places his things down, and with a little effort, moves the boulder out of the way. Once the farmer clears the path, he finds what the king put underneath: a purse full of gold.
If you were to ask Tracie May what character she used to play in the king’s fable, she would tell you she used to be like everyone else—walking around the boulder, never wondering what might be underneath. However, there came a time when she decided to lift that boulder, becoming who she is today. Tracie’s bio is stacked: she brings nearly three decades of experience as an award-winning PR executive, event producer, and magazine editor across fashion, travel, and luxury lifestyle. Nowadays, she’s a fixture on Vietnamese national TV—hosting galas for the prestigious culinary society Disciples Escoffier, MCing culinary events at Fusion Resorts and Villas, and walking runways for top designers like Adrian Anh Tuấn. So, how did she gain the strength and wisdom to finally lift that boulder?
“I popped out of my mother’s womb and said ta-da! I’m not a ham. I’m a roasted pork loin sandwich with barbeque sauce.” That was Tracie’s opening line when we started retracing her steps back to her childhood. She was midway through her hair and makeup session when I first met her on the second floor of King Poutine on Phan Xích Long Street. Whenever she is in the city, she’ll stop by to say hello to the owner, Chef Rang. “He’s my brother from another mother,” she said.
I took my seat to her left. She remained facing forward, eyes looking up at the ceiling as her beloved makeup artist, Bo Bui, selected mascara and blush from his portable kit, applying them seamlessly to her face. A few cigarette butts rested inside an ashtray within arm's reach, while another smoldered halfway down between her fingers. I put my things down and offered the menu, asking if she wanted something to eat. Although she loves the food at King Poutine—I do too, seeing as I couldn’t resist a serving of classic poutine while taking notes—she kindly and promptly reminded me that Vietnam Fashion Week was in full swing.
Even with another rainy day in Saigon, the weather didn't affect her mood. She was clearly in good spirits. Part of the reason was that it had been less than 48 hours since her New York Knicks defeated the San Antonio Spurs in Game 5 of the 2026 NBA Finals. The last time the Knicks won the championship was the same year Tracie was born in New York, where she spent the majority of her childhood near Tuxedo Park.
Preparing her signature short, spiky blond hair and makeup for another day on camera—she was scheduled to meet with some of Vietnam’s top fashionistas, designers, and chefs right after our chat—was just another day for her. While she was getting ready, I took a chance at the beginning of our conversation and guessed that she didn’t come from parents accustomed to being on stage or in the public eye.
“No actually, on the contrary,” she said.
Her mom was one of the first Revlon supermodels from back in the 1950s and her dad, although an insurance agent by day, also acted on Broadway as the original Freddy Eynsford-Hill in My Fair Lady. “He was an opera singer too—sang the shit out of Danny Boy” she added. Even Tracie’s sister sang too, trained in opera and then later spent over a decade touring around the world in Isaac Hayes’ band.
While her sister took the music route, Tracie was drawn to acting. She spent her youth enamored with the spotlight, staging performances both at home and at school. Lower and middle school in New York gave way to high school in the Boston suburbs at Dana Hall, an all-girls boarding school where her passion for the dramatic arts fully took root. From there, it was a straight line to Emerson College in downtown Boston, where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting. “I love the stage. I love performing. I love being in front of the audience. I love communicating. I love sharing. Ever since I was a young girl, that was my only dream,” she said.
One of her fondest memories is when she played Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the shadow cast of the cult classic, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Of all the projects she acted in, the flamboyant mad scientist and self-proclaimed "Sweet Transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania" appeared to be one of the roles she remembers most dearly. The character's ultimate anthem, “Don’t dream it, be it,” spoke directly to Tracie’s own need for freedom and self-expression. When she was back in New York City earlier this year, she made a point to catch the latest revival on Broadway with a few close friends. According to Tracie, even though half a century has passed since its release, it still holds up as strong as ever.
Tracie loved every minute of acting and performing when she went to Emerson. In her eyes, she was getting an education on self-expression. Having said that, as lovely as it was to immerse herself in the world of drama, hanging with other theater kids reading Shakespeare and dreaming of making it big, in retrospect, she admits she would have done things differently.
From her perspective, because ageism is so prevalent in the U.S., and in Hollywood specifically, she would have gone straight into the scene, skipping university, taking acting classes, and trying to make her mark fresh out of high school at eighteen years old. Instead, by the time she graduated she was considered too old to be a model and the window to pursue the kind of career she wanted was very narrow. That’s not to say she carries regret with her to this day. “I’m happy with the choices I made. Some of my best friends in the world are from college and I loved my time in school. But from a professional level, if the “me now” were advising “me then” I would have done things differently.” She summed up her feelings about the topic saying, “When you’re over 40 in America they might as well take you out in the field and shoot you like Old Yeller. You ain’t working unless you are Meryl Streep.”
“But she’s a unicorn,” I interjected.
“She’s a unicorn, for sure,” she concluded.
I followed up and asked if now, later in her career, she felt that sense of ageism in Vietnam.
“In Vietnam, it’s totally opposite. There is respect for your elders. I think it’s about the wisdom achieved in your age. That is a cultural thing in Vietnam that allows me, as a woman of my age, to be able to work and pursue things here.” I nodded. She continued, “That’s what is so amazing about Vietnam: I can come to this country at 50 years old and completely phoenix that shit and reinvent at my age—and having gone from a public figure to behind the scenes to a public figure at this age—only in this country do I have that opportunity.” In other words, if the “Tracie now” told the “Tracie then” what she would be doing in Vietnam, she would have thought there was no possibility of even imagining the life she lives now. She finally wrapped up her hair and makeup session and turned toward me, “But I have to tell you about how I got here. That’s like the craziest story.”
After receiving her BFA at Emerson, Tracie dove into the world of modeling. She spent a few years in a whirlwind tour between cities like Paris, Miami, and New York. She didn’t comment too much about her time modeling other than it eventually steered her back to performing when she decided to move to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career there. Arriving in California, she ran face-first into a wall of reality. “I turned thirty and I wasn’t Angelina Jolie yet and in America, in Hollywood, when you're over 30 and you haven’t hit that lead role movie status…,” she trailed off. Instead, Tracie was being offered to be in movies doing the type of things that she didn’t feel that she was destined to do after studying Shakespeare for years. “I could have been a very successful B-Movie bimbo, but that’s just not what I wanted for my life and career,” she said.
Despite that, she managed to land parts on both TV and film while in New York and California, but in her eyes the path forward was binary. “I was either going to be a movie star or I wasn’t. And that was my dream and it didn’t pan out how I wanted.” After so many years of singing, acting, and sharing herself with the world, before she knew it the road came to an end and that was that. Despite the waves of frustration, she knew one thing was true: she’s good with people. Even in meeting her for the first time, Tracie disarms you immediately. She puts up no fronts and speaks to you about as directly, honestly, and candidly as you’re going to find. I’d venture to guess, putting aside her personal journey since leaving home, that’s just the true New Yorker blood in her.
In addition to being good with people, she had worked with multiple publicists before and she was well versed in fashion both from her acting and modeling days. So, although it didn’t appear as if she’d be spending time performing in front of a camera, she decided that she could use her experiences as a competitive advantage and focus on building up other brands. She wanted to hone in on promoting fashion products such as accessories and footwear. Although she loves people, working with celebrity egos is a whole other ballgame. As a result, alongside her friend they launched a company called Fabulous PR… and became a professional publicist agency for fashion brands.
Over the course of the years running her boutique agency with her friend, she produced a multitude of fashion shows across the globe, did several seasons of New York Fashion Week, and as a result, Tracie eventually went in-house with a brand that she represented called Monarchy. She started out as their Director of PR and later became the brand’s Vice President of Global Communications and PR. She worked for them for a while before redirecting her focus by opening up her own agency once more: May-Wagner Public Relations. For the following 25 years, there was never a moment to slow down. She was living the Hollywood lifestyle full steam ahead: working, socializing, staying out way too late way too many times. Hearing her explain how over time she became more and more depleted—emotionally, spiritually, financially—I wondered if and when on that downward spiral she hit rock bottom. “I didn’t know if I hit a rock bottom, but I was close. I was bottoming out,” she said. “I was like treading water in the middle of the ocean without a life preserver and no fricken island in sight.”
Coming to the end of the tunnel as she described it, she started to think to herself that if she didn't change, she was going to experience a serious falling out. So, she decided to visit her sister who lived in Vietnam. She and her husband had been living there for a few years by that point. Her friends, who saw the writing on the wall and had for quite some time, all responded with a resounding: Go! “Every single person who loved me in the world said to me, ‘GET OUT. Go to Vietnam. We love you. We’ll see you later.’” Her friends also knew Tracie’s real intentions for the trip. She was unhappy in her marriage and Vietnam felt like a safe place where she could deal with how she felt about it. Thus, when she left, her ex-husband didn’t know, but her friends did. So, in February 2020, just two weeks after her 50th birthday, she got rid of her apartment, sold her car, put everything in storage, and left.
“My plan was to pack my two dogs, three suitcases, and $250 bucks in my pockets. Come stay with my sister, ask for the divorce, cry it out, have my personal ‘Eat Pray Love’, check it out.” She shows me the tattoo on her arm from the now famous wanderlust movie.
“Nice,” I said.
“Right?” she nods back with wide eyes. “And then travel Southeast Asia for a couple months and then go home and face the music.”
The rain outside of the restaurant was coming down in full force now. The restaurant’s second floor was filled with the loud static of a rainy mid-afternoon in Saigon.
Tracie’s escape plan was set. It was going to be an emotional rollercoaster that she willingly strapped herself into, hoping for the best. Yet, just like a high-speed rollercoaster, you can mentally prepare yourself all you want, but once you start twisting, turning, flipping upside down and back up again, everything changes. A week after she arrived in Vietnam, Tracie’s brother-in-law got that terrifying 3 a.m. phone call that his mother was in the Intensive Care Unit. Doctors informed him that she was on her deathbed and if he wanted to say goodbye, he needed to get on the next flight back to LA. They rushed over to the room Tracie was sleeping in, jolted her awake, and said, “Can you handle the kids for five days? We are on a 7 a.m. flight to LA. We’re going to Palm Springs.”
“Of course,” Tracie replied, “Thank God I’m here. I got this. Not an issue.”
As it turned out, Tracie’s brother-in-law’s mother was patient #200 in the U.S. to be diagnosed with COVID. In an even more startling twist, she ended up surviving. However, back across the ocean, Vietnam closed its borders and locked Tracie’s sister and brother-in-law out. Tracie was on her own with their kids, their three dogs, and her own two dogs, now tasked with making sure everyone was okay in a country she had just landed in. Because of the circumstances, she had to change, and so she did.
By the time her sister and husband returned to Vietnam ten months later on Christmas Day, Tracie had already filed her divorce, found remote work thanks to clients she still had back in the U.S., eventually reunited the kids with their parents in California, and came to the conclusion she didn’t want to leave. She wanted to stay. Tracie let out a hearty laugh as she reflected on her decision then: “I guess I live in Vietnam now!”
A few months later, after her brother-in-law’s business shut down as a result of COVID, the whole family decided to move back to the US. Tracie had a choice to make here: was it finally time to go home and face the music or put your stake in the ground and double down? She opted for the latter and decided she would build a whole new life for herself in Vietnam. After making some final adjustments, her hair was now set in her signature messy, natural daytime style, so her assistants packed up their kits and stepped out. She kept talking, I kept typing, and the rain outside King Poutine kept pouring as the restaurant’s staff cleared away my empty plate.
Moving to a new country is one of the rarest opportunities in life to transform yourself. Tracie said when she arrived in Vietnam she was overweight, had hot pink hair, and felt like many of the people in the neighborhood she was staying in became friends with her out of pity. Instead of joining in on the pity, she didn’t let that hold her back from starting a new life. “So universe, this is what you’re showing me,” she said, reflecting on that period. “It’s a very odd way of showing me, but this is what you’re showing me, so I’m just gonna embrace it.”
Flash forward six months and she lost over 50 pounds, and to date, 75. The culmination of a shift in mindset, diet, and plenty of Pilates classes resulted in a physical and mental transformation that Tracie could be proud of. In a testament to her candidness, she wasn’t shy to admit experimenting with fat-loss drugs like Ozempic or beauty enhancement techniques like Botox and fillers. “No shame in my game,” she said. “I have no problem talking about that. That’s something that really bothers me—that there’s so much shame in women taking care of themselves. I think that’s bullshit. Go get your Botox, honey. Go do what you gotta do to make you feel good about you!”
I must admit it’s refreshing to hear someone speak so openly about their body, and specifically their weight. I’ve never met anyone who truly likes the exact weight they are at any point in life, so it is a sensitive topic with anyone you speak to. In Tracie’s case, it’s empowering to hear someone making the conscious decision to start taking better care of themselves and feeling good about the effort they put in to get to that point. “I just wanted to be happy, so I figured out what are the steps that will make me happy? I definitely wanted to travel. There are so many beautiful places in Vietnam and I wanted to take advantage of that. I wanted to feel good physically. I wanted to feel sexy again. I wanted to crawl out of that fricking hole, you know? So I slowly did.”
The biggest turning point that followed Tracie’s physical transformation was a small but deliberate shift in mindset. For nearly three decades prior to moving to Vietnam, she spent her career channeling all of her energy into making other people successful. After all that time, she decided, why not do the same for herself? As a kind of social experiment, she asked herself, “What if I give myself 10% of that energy? I don’t have the time or the resources to give myself 100%, but let’s start with 10% and see what happens.” That’s the exact moment when she came to the boulder in the road. That's the exact moment when she decided she was going to put in a little extra effort and move it out of the way. And that’s when she discovered the gold that was hiding underneath the whole time.
Through her clients and connections in media, specifically Jade Huynh, founder of Oriental Media Vietnam, she got her first major gig in Vietnam. Oriental owns five luxury and lifestyle publications including Thời Gian, Parents World Vietnam, Deluxe Vietnam, Portfolio Vietnam, and Epicure Vietnam. Tracie became Epicure’s Senior Editor. A couple of highlights in her role there included becoming a Travel Ambassador for the tour operator Luxperia, as well as doing PR for the smart electric bike company Modmo. Yet, as fate would have it, one day Epicure needed someone to step up to be on camera and represent the magazine as a judge on Top Chef Vietnam. The original Top Chef started in 2006, but didn’t start airing in Vietnam until 2014. Over the last decade, it has become increasingly popular and is seen as one of the most respected culinary reality shows in the country. She brought her experience and knowledge about fine dining, luxury hospitality, and culinary presentation to the screen for viewers to relish. More than that, though, she brought herself, entirely unabashed about who she was. With that, she made her mark on Vietnamese TV overnight. “That’s when the boulder really started rolling down the hill,” she said.
Top Chef opened the floodgates. Tracie’s social media accounts boomed and the more attention she gained, the more opportunities for gigs followed. With that, her confidence also skyrocketed. She knew she could be herself and that that’s what people responded to. “What I realized in Vietnam is that there ain’t nobody like me, and I can own this shit. I can fucking own this shit if I give myself the effort to do so,” she said. Nowadays, she hosts major gala events for the biggest celebrity chefs in Vietnam, judges cocktail competitions, and gets flown all over the country, essentially mixing work and play nonstop. Yet, even in between tasting the most incredible food, befriending the most beloved talent, and staying at the most beautiful places to make various forms of content, she’s proud and humbled that she’s allowed to be her authentic self the whole way through. “Every day I get to show my appreciation for this country that absolutely saved me,” she said. “Saved me! If you had told me seven years ago that this would be my life right now, I would have thought you were insane in the membrane.”
The journey Tracie described seemed to come full circle. She used to live a life in LA she claimed was akin to being a hamster on a wheel—working, socializing, and partying nonstop to live a life that afforded her no sense of satisfaction, freedom, or love. Now, she lives in Vietnam, where she is once again working nonstop in the media industry. It begged the question, and in my eyes the ultimate one: what’s the difference between that wheel and the one you’re on now? “Oh, that's a really good question dude. You know, it’s a totally different wheel!” she said.
At that moment, it was as if countless memories crossed her mind all at once—the Fashion Weeks, back-to-back interviews, dinners in different cities, and the launch of her upcoming clothing line, Shahida VN. “They’re all the manifestation of my reinvention, and it’s exciting because I never know what’s going to happen tomorrow,” she said. Case in point: the week after she spoke to me she got flown out to be MC for the Escoffier Gala Dinner at voco Scenia Bay Nha Trang, dressed like a sea-goddess. “Like, I don’t even speak Vietnamese and I’m getting to do all of this. It’s insane!”
“And they want you!” I emphasized.
“And they want me!” she replied. “It’s extraordinary. I’m not sure it would have been available to me anywhere else in the world except Vietnam.”
It’s clear how grateful Tracie feels to be in the position she’s in now, yet what’s most striking is how she spent decades trying to fit into everyone else’s expectations, stuck on a wheel that gave her no real fulfillment, only to come full circle and discover the true power of simply being herself. All of those opportunities you think you missed out on in the past are still on the table when you just be yourself. Similarly, all the possibilities waiting in the future are ripe for the taking the moment you decide to just be yourself.
Tracie couldn’t help but laugh. “It’s true,” she said. “It’s such a 360 of my life. It started this way, and then I went behind the scenes, and now I’m in front of the camera again. I was at this juncture of my life before where I thought that was all over and now to be able to inspire people, communicate, share all of the things that I love and the people I love is such a gift. I am so grateful. I wake up in the morning every day with a shit-eating grin on my face in gratitude. Thank you universe for having my back and giving me a second chance at true happiness. I wish that on everyone.”
One of the future projects that she hopes to work on is a travel show where she gets to play her own version of the late, great Anthony Bourdain, who many already know loved Vietnam deeply. Tracie explained the underlying theme of the show is simple: “It’s never too late. Life’s too short to be unhappy. Go find your happy. Whatever that looks like.” The idea itself has been brewing for a long time, but in practical terms, it’s still in the early development phase. However, with the connections she’s made and resources she’s accrued over the years, Tracie feels confident she’ll be able to bring it to fruition.
As that project takes its time to build, Tracie has no plans of slowing down. That said, as much as she is in the limelight, she is disciplined enough to create space and time for herself to decompress. She likes to relax at her home, which she moved to a couple years ago in Son Tra, about ten kilometers north of Danang. She spends a lot of her time going to the beach, hanging out with her dogs, and every now and then enjoying a delicious tuna melt on sourdough. She jokes how she’s an Aquarius, so she likes to socialize a lot and meet new people, but she’s also become a devout homebody when she’s not working. Experience has shown her that dedicating time for herself and for meetups with her tight inner circle of friends is essential for living a good life.
Most of the time, people change because of circumstances. They find themselves in a situation where they have no choice but to change. The resulting realizations change everything—not just how you view the present moment, but also how you see what brought you here from your past and how you envision the rest of your story playing out. Whichever path you take, you will invariably come to a big boulder lying in the middle of the road. The choice to complain about it is always there, but so is the opportunity to make something of it. If you do, you may find the gold was there all along. In the case of Tracie’s story, she did come across that big boulder in the road: herself. A seemingly immovable obstacle only she could move. Her story shows that sometimes you only need to give yourself 10% of that energy to make something happen, and yet sometimes that’s all you need. The gold underneath is symbolic of the true self that lay hidden beneath every role she played throughout her life—as a singer, actor, model, and publicist making a success story out of others. Tracie did what few are willing to do: take matters into her own hands. She accepted the odd challenge the universe offered her, embraced it, and learned what it was trying to teach her. She is living proof that if you are willing to own who you are and pursue what makes you happy, the path opens up and things are sure to get rolling. Outside, the storm rolls on through Saigon and for Tracie, her next act is just beginning. Neither you, nor I, nor even Tracie herself can conceive of what is coming next. But she knows better than most: it’s never too late to take center stage. Because whether you step into the spotlight or not, the show goes on.
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