Tracy E. Gilchrist (she/her) is the host and executive producer of the Holding Space With Tracy E. Gilchrist podcast. She is the former VP, Editorial and Special Projects for equalpride, the parent company of The Advocate and Out magazines. She was the editor in chief of The Advocate from March 2020 to August 2022. As EIC, she led The Advocate print team to win the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Magazine Overall Coverage for 2021 and 2022. A media veteran who went viral in 2024 with her Wicked “holding space” interview with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, she writes about the intersections of equality and pop culture. Her cover stories for The Advocate and Out include profiles of Erivo, Brandi Carlile, Ariana DeBose, Cynthia Nixon, Harvey Guillen, and Janelle Monáe.
Gilchrist co-created The Advocates podcast in 2017 and the virtual talk show Inside With the Advocate in 2020. As a moderator, she’s helmed discussions with the casts and directors of Love Lies Bleeding, The Favourite, Euphoria, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Mother Play on Broadway, and more. In 2019, she hosted the official red-carpet livestream for Showtime’s The L Word: Generation Q premiere. Gilchrist has delivered her talk, Pandora’s Box to Pose: Game-changing LGBTQ+ Visibility in Film and TV, at universities throughout the country.
Since her viral interview, Gilchrist was named to the board of It Gets Better in 2024 and made an honorary member of the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus in 2025. She has been honored as one of AdWeek’s Pride Stars (2022) and one of Mount Holyoke College’s Alums to Watch Out For (2020). A passionate philanthropist, Gilchrist participated in AIDS Lifecycle seven times, raising more than $35,000 to help end HIV and AIDS.