Biography:
Tight Line Media CEO Kris Millgate is a bold storyteller, but she wasn't born brave. Millgate, an outdoor journalist born the same year as the Endangered Species Act, grew up painfully shy and afraid of beards.
Her first encounter with a bald eagle in grade school was one of defeat. The nation’s symbol of freedom was disappearing. Now eagles nest near Millgate’s Idaho home. The raptor is no longer endangered and that shy little girl of way back when covers award-winning natural resource stories, including the one about the bird that didn’t disappear.
Millgate is an Emmy-winning multimedia journalist who spent a decade in TV news before starting Tight Line Media in 2006. She hosted Time OUT, an outdoor TV news segment, for seven years then created East Idaho Outdoors Magazine in 2014. Her first book, My Place Among Men, published in 2019. The sequel, My Place Among Fish, published in 2021 with the debut of her salmon film Ocean to Idaho. Her third book, My Place Among Beasts published with her wildlife film, On Grizzly Ground, in 2023. Her newest production, Sage Wisdom West, premieres in 2026 along with its backstory book, My Place Among Birds.
With three decades of multimedia storytelling, she traverses the country in search of dynamic and engaging topics. She researches issues thoroughly then translates core elements via video, photo and words with credibility that demands audience.
TLM productions tour with film festivals and win national honors. As producer, writer, videographer, photographer, certified drone pilot, editor and gear hauler, Millgate engages in every project with inspiring enthusiasm and unmatched intensity.
In the edit bay, she never tires. In the field, she never stops. She hikes, bikes, rows and flies her cameras into the wilderness to collar grizzlies, catch native trout, and yes, she counts bald eagles too.
Millgate is a trail runner, fly fisher, bird hunter, master naturalist and seeker of awkward moments. She talks to strangers daily and hangs out with beards often.
