Kenny Chao is an American videographer, social media star and podcast host who is best recognized for his association with 2HYPE, a YouTube group that does basketball videos. Starting out as the cameraman of group member Jesse Riedel, he became the group’s Production Manager in late 2019. He is active on three YouTube channels named Kenny Chao, Bao Chao and Chao Plug, and co-hosts the podcast In The Paint with fellow YouTuber Marcelas Howard.
Early Life
Kenny Chao attended California State University, Long Beach between 2012 and 2016 and completed his Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting from there.
Career
While still attending university, Kenny Chao started his career as a Sales Associate at Best Buy in November 2012 in Cerritos and worked for four months. He later served as Resident Assistance at California State University between September 2014 and May 2015. He worked as Accounting Assistant at Rolling Hills Covenant Church from July 2015 to May 2016 before serving as an Audit Intern at BDO USA, LLP for two months. He later returned to the company as an Assurance Associate in October 2017 and has been working in that capacity ever since. He had also been an Accounting Intern for Murphy, Murphy, & Murphy, CPAs for four months in early 2017.
Kenny, who founded the companies Drizzy Inc. and Chaomedia in 2018, started making YouTube videos on his oldest, self-titled channel in January 2019. His first few videos were interviews of members of 2HYPE, a YouTube group that does basketball videos primarily. After interviewing 2HYPE members Jesser, Mopi and Jiedel in the first three episodes of the Chao Chats series, he opened up about how he became Jesser’s cameraman in the fourth episode. He revealed that he previously did a lot of filming for NBA Impersonator BdotAdot5, who invited him to NBA trainer Chris Johnson’s workout, where he first met Jesser as he was filming for a YouTube video. Kenny ended up chatting with Jesser about his shoes for a while and took several of his pictures which he sent to him after asking for his phone number. A few months later, Jesser called him to ask how Chaomedia was faring and offered him the job of being his cameraman for vlogs and such. Kenny, who was mostly focused on high school basketball at the time, gladly accepted the offer.
Apart from helping Jesser with his videos, Kenny utilized the opportunity to expand his Chaomedia brand by building a presence on various social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube. Besides making more Chao Chats episodes, he also uploaded other basketball themed challenge videos and sneaker videos on his main channel. He also has other channels like the Shorts channel Chao Plug, created in September 2017, and Bao Chao, created in January 2019 and primarily for reactions and vlogs. He is also the co-host, along with Marcelas Howard, of the podcast In The Paint. According to his LinkedIn profile, he became the Production Manager at 2HYPE in September 2019.
