Show host highlights cultural connections in Federal Way | Hometown Hero

Published 1:30 pm Friday, March 27, 2026

Emmy award winning media personality and producer TraeAnna Holiday spends much of her time in Seattle, but her spotlight still shines on the city she calls home — Federal Way.

Holiday is both the director of communications for the Washington State Office of Equity and also the host of a daily show on Converge Media titled “The Day with Trae.”

Her daily show focuses on “engaging civic conversation and celebrating Black excellence across the Puget Sound” and “goes beyond headlines to spotlight local change-makers, entrepreneurs, and community leaders, curating exciting content around themes like health and wellness, business and community education.”

The show’s hundreds of episodes feature leaders from all over, including local leaders like Eddie Purpose of Progress Pushers, Taniesha Lyons of the Federal Way Black Collective, Carlecia Bell of Phenomenal She, former Federal Way City Councilmember Jesse Johnson and Anthony Curtis of the Black Equality Coalition.

For her work as a community organizer and for her impactful storytelling, TraeAnna Holiday is the Federal Way Mirror’s Hometown Hero for March 2026.

“The Day with Trae” and other past storytelling projects came out of a realization that there were so many positive stories of community work that were unknown outside of those who were intimately involved with the organizations leading it.

“I really wanted to change that because I was involved and in relationship and collaboration with so many folks who I was inspired by,” but people may not know how they’ve been “impacting this community in so many ways,” Holiday said.

She has felt the impact of her work the most when seeing the way people respond.

“The biggest thing has been … people seeing me out in community and thanking me for highlighting an organization or an event or an initiative or something that they just weren’t aware of that now, because of ‘The Day with Trae,’ they have information about, they have a way to plug in, to tap in, to connect, to get involved, to be engaged,” she said.

In addition to the organizations and individuals from Federal Way that she’s highlighted in her show, Holiday celebrated more leaders in Federal Way in her conversation with the Mirror, including Lamont Styles of Life’s Styles and Catrice Dennis of Teaching With Love and Care, both of whom have been Hometown Heroes in the past.

Holiday has raised both her sons in Federal Way, and said she’s appreciated the community organizations in the city for their impact on her own children, including Teaching with Love and Care.

It is her sons that are the main reason she does what she does.

“I’m forever inspired by them … I think about creating a better world for them, and creating opportunities for them to be seen as Black men in this world, and that will forever be a guide for me in this lifetime. I’m so grateful to be their mother…that is my greatest joy.”

Connecting with community in Federal Way has been another joy for Holiday.

Although many of the Black families in Federal Way, including her own, were pushed out of Seattle due to gentrification in the neighborhoods that hold their history and community, she said this migration has meant that community is growing in new places.

“To see how community is being built so organically in the Federal Way area … I’m impressed by the resilience and the love and care of folks” like Jesse Johnson who continue to do work outside of an elected official role, “folks like Jimmy Brown, who are leading, amazing mentoring programs and civic engagement for youth,” Holiday said.

As a journalist and storyteller in a challenging time in the United States, Holiday said she is focusing on documenting the essence of the moment for the historical record.

“It’s important for us to identify the stories that are reflective of where we are today so that we can capture them and cement them in time … we don’t want to forget how we stay resilient in these times. We don’t want to forget how we empower one another and encourage one another in these times,” Holiday said.

Looking to the future of Federal Way, she says the most important thing for the community right now is “connection.”

“There are so many things that are tugging at us to be more and more individualistic, and we have to collectively resist that and find a way to stay collaborative, collective, group minded,” Holiday said.