Earlier this year, innovative media platform Hollywood Unlocked shared a video of its CEO, Jason Lee, grocery shopping with megastar Rihanna at the Bristol Farms in West Hollywood. The outing went viral with its joyful and heartfelt moments of the duo getting into Yung Miami’s “Spend Dat” and a sweet exchange between Rihanna and a cancer patient who approached her. Lee’s friendship with the “Diamonds” singer is one of several close relationships he’s built with artists over the years, including Cardi B and Tiffany Haddish, who hosted this year’s Hollywood Unlocked Impact Awards.
Watching the video, it’s easy to imagine the kid Lee once was — a foster child who escaped into celebrity culture and dreamed of connecting with stars like Michael Jackson. Growing up in Stockton, California, in the ’80s and ’90s, he would dial 411 directory assistance in hopes of tracking down his favorite celebrities.
For Lee, entertainment wasn’t just an obsession — it was an escape. During roughly five years in foster care, celebrity culture offered Lee a glimpse of a world beyond his own circumstances. Today, that childhood fascination has evolved into a career that pairs storytelling with advocacy, using media not just to chronicle celebrity culture but to shape conversations and create opportunities.
Hollywood Unlocked features celebrity news alongside episodes of “The Jason Lee Show,” which is licensed to multiple platforms and recently partnered with BET through its creator studio. Lee also leveraged his three seasons on “Love & Hip Hop,” beginning in 2015, to grow Hollywood Unlocked into a recognizable destination for celebrity and culture coverage.
“By reaching masses of people, whether it’s the 400 at a hospital or 4 million across the globe, it’s, ‘What type of influence and impact do I want to have on the world, what type of influence do I want to have in the culture?’” Lee says. “When I saw the boom of social media and blogging and the dot-com [era], I was like, ‘You know, I want to get into the tech business.’ To me, HollywoodUnlocked.com is a tech-based business, but the creative output of the product is media.”
In June 2026, changemakers across the spectrum of entertainment, advocacy and politics gathered at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles for the Hollywood Unlocked Impact Awards. Tennessee Representative Justin Jones was awarded alongside entertainment legends Tyler Perry, Patti LaBelle and more. The event benefited the Hollywood Cares Foundation, which Lee founded to uplift underserved youth in Black and Brown communities through leadership, civic engagement and personal development. The Impact Awards are an extension of that throughline of culture and social involvement that began early for Lee, a gay man and media mogul who understands the value in telling his own story and uplifting others.
“Growing up, I really loved just entertainment culture and celebrity life,” Lee adds. “And when I was in a group home in foster care, watching my favorite celebrities performing, that was kind of like my thing.”
“What I’ve learned over the years from being a former foster kid all the way through my work with probation and juveniles to working in the union is just, narrative building is important, and being in control of your narrative is important. Storytelling is the way to do that,” says Lee.
In his 2019 memoir, “God Must Have Forgotten About Me,” the future labor organizer, reality TV star on “Love & Hip Hop” and host of the juggernaut talk series “The Jason Lee Show” told the story of turbulent formative experiences in California’s Central Valley.
“It wasn’t a childhood that I think everybody can relate to, but there are lots of people in my community today that still have some of the same challenges,” Lee says. “My mother ended up becoming afflicted by drugs. My father was absent. I ended up in foster care for about five years and then came home, re-entered the community, ended up getting shot, and then losing a brother to gun violence. It was challenging, but obviously I stayed the path and charted a course that was rooted in overcoming and have done pretty well for myself.”
Early on, Lee knew the importance of owning his story and of speaking up. A graduate of Amos Alonzo Stagg High School in Stockton, Lee returned to his alma mater at 19 as a part-time campus liaison at a minimum wage of $10.63 an hour, ensuring kids made it safely to class. When Lee spotted a sign on the union message board indicating there was a vote to ratify a contract to reclassify their positions in a deal the union made with the school district, and jobs would be eliminated, Lee sprang into action.
“The first question I had was, how does the union make a deal with the school without talking to us? Why is my job that I love going away and I [do] not know about it? I started calling around other schools, talking to other campus school liaison aides, and none of them knew what was happening,” Lee says. “I started organizing meetings across the school district. Then I reached out to community groups like the Nation of Islam and the NAACP and different community organizations.”
Though Lee couldn’t save his own position as he had been there less than five years, the work of organizing forced the union and school district to renegotiate terms and resulted in saving several jobs. From there, Lee worked in probation and education for six years, eventually becoming a union representative for the Service Employees International Union Local 250 and ascending the ranks to become staff director within the Kaiser Permanente division beginning in Sacramento and expanding to his home city of Stockton and eventually to Southern California.
“I immediately became a steward of the union, a chief steward, executive board member, and got very active in the union there,” Lee says. “That school district experience was what really fueled my passion for standing up for the underdog.”
Upon leaving SEIU, Lee worked for the California Nurses Association for four years, where he advocated for nurses in and around Los Angeles, negotiating their contracts when they went on strike. As digital media transformed the entertainment landscape, Lee launched Hollywood Unlocked in 2015, creating a platform centered on Black entertainment and culture that continues to thrive even as much of the media industry contracts.
“We saw diversification as a priority early on. So, you know, we have relationships with streaming platforms that aren’t based on advertising dollars,” Lee says, acknowledging media downsizing under the Trump administration.
“We’re navigating with optimism that at some point the pendulum is going to swing the other direction. And we’ll be ready there to work with all the brands who have abandoned the culture under this administration,” he adds.
One offshoot of Hollywood Unlocked is Healthcare Unlocked, launched in partnership with Enhance Health in 2023. The vertical combines celebrity culture and health insurance “to help families get access to quality, affordable healthcare,” Lee says.
BET’s Black + Iconic Soiree, which celebrates Black LGBTQ+ excellence, honored Lee with its Culture Trailblazer Award in May.
“I went from running through the streets in Stockton, California, where I was shot, to now helping lead those same streets as the first openly gay vice mayor in the city’s history,” Lee said in his acceptance speech. “A Black gay kid who once felt discarded and underestimated is now helping to shape policy, protect diversity and inclusion, and advocate for safer communities, and show young people what happens when you refuse to give up on yourself.”
Through the years, Lee has held ties to the community where he was raised, and in 2024, he ran for Stockton City Council District 6 on a campaign including uplifting youth and won, becoming the city’s first openly gay vice mayor.
“The [Trump] administration has just pulled the veil of racism back in this country where we can see it for what it is. And then we all get to decide how we engage it. Do we participate in the election process by voting? Do we jump in the political arena like I did and become an elected?” Lee says. “The greatest thing that we have that a lot of our ancestors and the people in the civil rights movement lost their lives for is our voice and our right to have an opinion and to have the ability to voice that opinion.”
Whether it was as a campus liaison at 19, launching the Hollywood Cares Foundation, or focusing on youth in his political campaign, Lee has continually advocated for youth. As a gay man and a force in advocacy, politics and media, Lee is a possibility model for young people who see themselves in him.
“The world is so noisy now with social media, and social media every day tells you who you are, who you should be. You’re not good enough,” Lee says. “I love that when kids see me, they go, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s the guy that was with Rihanna. That’s the guy that was with Cardi B. That’s the guy that’s our vice mayor. That guy right there got shot and survived and changed his life. Oh, and he’s gay.”
