Before joining the St. Petersburg Times 10 years ago, Lee freelanced as a designer and infographic artist for various publishers and design firms including McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin, Weekly Reader, Grolier, MacMillan, Kirchoff-Wohlberg and Walker Design for eight years. Earlier in her career, Lee was an infographic artist at the Times Journal Publishing Company in Springfield Virginia, and then associate art director at McGraw-Hill's Engineering News Record in New York.