# UK Athletics promotes Bailey, hires Christensen for creative roles **Published:** 2026-07-28T16:01:56.000Z **Source:** [UK Athletics](https://ukathletics.com/news/2026/07/28/uk-announces-lakia-bailey-as-sr-creative-director-adds-austin-christensen-as-director-of-strategic-communication/) **AI-generated:** yes (claude-haiku-4-5-20251001) **Canonical:** https://feeds.lexingtonky.news/article/uk-athletics-promotes-bailey-hires-christensen-for-creative-roles LEXINGTON, Ky. — [Kentucky Athletics has announced the promotion of Lakia Bailey to Senior Creative Director and the addition of Austin Christensen as Director of Strategic Communication](https://ukathletics.com/news/2026/07/28/uk-announces-lakia-bailey-as-sr-creative-director-adds-austin-christensen-as-director-of-strategic-communication/), strengthening the department's Brand and Content team under new leadership. Bailey, who has served on the UK Athletics creative services staff for five years, will lead the award-winning Creative Services team, the artistic and graphic-design arm of UK Athletics. Kim Troxall will take on a role leading the in-sport creative team under Bailey's direction. Since joining the Wildcats in 2021, Bailey has become one of the department's most accomplished creative leaders. As assistant creative director from 2021-23, Bailey led creative efforts for women's basketball, volleyball and softball. Her work on the nationally recognized women's basketball #CrownHer campaign, which honored Kentucky legend and WNBA No. 1 overall draft pick Rhyne Howard, generated more than three million social impressions and helped produce a sellout crowd for Howard's Senior Night. The campaign earned Bailey the 2022 Lytho Best Content Creator Award. Promoted to Creative Director in 2023, Bailey assumed oversight of Kentucky Football's creative strategy and helped shape the athletics department visually. Before joining Kentucky, Bailey spent nine years at Pikeville in athletics communications and university marketing, and also worked as a corporate sales account executive and graphic designer with the Lexington Legends. Christensen, who started in April, will lead communications strategy for Men's Basketball and oversee the department's social media, among other responsibilities. He comes to UK from the University of Idaho, where he served as Director of Athletic Communications for Vandal football. While there, Christensen spearheaded the nationally recognized Fightin' Taters rebrand, generating more than $7 million in earned media value and reaching an audience of more than 200 million people. Prior to Idaho, Christensen held athletic communications positions at Clemson and Weber State. A United States Air Force veteran and Chinese linguist, Christensen graduated summa cum laude from Grand Canyon University and is fluent in English, Portuguese, Spanish, and Chinese. The announcements come as [J Batt begins his tenure as CEO of Champions Blue LLC and UK Athletics Director on July 28](https://ukathletics.com/news/2026/07/09/j-batt-set-to-begin-tenure-at-uk/). Batt succeeds Mitch Barnhart, who retired at the end of June after leading UK Athletics for nearly a quarter century. ## Sources - [UK Athletics](https://ukathletics.com/news/2026/07/28/uk-announces-lakia-bailey-as-sr-creative-director-adds-austin-christensen-as-director-of-strategic-communication/) - [J Batt's July 28 start date as UK Athletics Director](https://ukathletics.com/news/2026/07/09/j-batt-set-to-begin-tenure-at-uk/) --- This article was generated by AI (claude-haiku-4-5-20251001) based on source material from UK Athletics, enriched with 2 web searches. The original source is available at https://ukathletics.com/news/2026/07/28/uk-announces-lakia-bailey-as-sr-creative-director-adds-austin-christensen-as-director-of-strategic-communication/.