Veteran entertainment journalist Kelli Skye Fadroski has joined the AEG-owned Crypto.com Arena, Peacock Theater, and L.A LIVE as manager of communications. Fadroski, who began covering music and live entertainment at the age of 15, joins AEG after an incredible 18-year run with Southern California News Group, which includes the Orange County Register and other SoCal titles where she most recently served as features editor covering the live music scene across the region.
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A graduate of California State University, Fullerton, Fadroski has interviewed and profiled hundreds of A-list artists including Taylor Swift, Aretha Franklin, Ozzy Osbourne, Gwen Stefani and Andrea Bocelli, among others.
“My career started in high school,” Fadroski tells Billboard. “It was really music that kind of brought me to journalism. I was the typical nerdy teenager, headphones on listening to anything and everything just to drown out the outside world.”
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Fadroski took an internship at the OC Register in 2006 where she was later offered a music writer position and eventually became part of the features department, rising up the ranks to become digital features editor for the newspaper’s ownership group.
“I consider myself extremely fortunate to have had the opportunities that I’ve had to serve in that capacity,” Fadroski tells Billboard. “When this opportunity presented itself, I just saw it as a growth step for me, personally continue on, uh, with my passion of music and live events.”
Her new boss at Crypto.com Arena and LA Live Cara Vanderhook says, “When the opportunity presented itself, Kelli was the first person that came to mind to join our team as our new communications manager.”
“Kelli has highly respected throughout the live entertainment industry,” Vanderhook adds. “She is a gifted writer and her experience will be an amazing addition to our team and help elevate our story telling both internally and externally.”
Fadroski says she is a believer in the transformative power of live music, noting “The beauty of live events and concerts is how it can transport you from your daily grind and the problems and emotions that you’re feeling that are negative or sad, into a different world where those problems don’t exist. You just get to have the time of your life and no one cares. You can dance, you can laugh, you can cry, you can sing. No one judges you. You just go and have the best time, escaping the outside world for a few hours.”