Stout was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,[1] to a European American father and a Han Chinese mother;[2] as a result, she was raised in a partially Chinese-speaking household.

[1] In 1996, she started working as an editorial intern at Wired, and in 1997 she graduated with a master's degree in media studies from Stanford.

[1][7] In 2000, a senior producer for CNN invited Stout to work as a "television and dotcom reporter" after listening to her give a speech about the internet in China at the Foreign Correspondents' Club, Hong Kong.

[1] Starting from 2001, she hosted the daily World Report which earned her a 2006 Asian Television Award as Best News Presenter or Anchor when it was still called CNN Today.

From 2010 to 2018, she hosted CNNI's premier Asia-Pacific Primetime show News Stream with Kristie Lu Stout, until it was cancelled due to budget cuts.