Bio

Brandon Tensley is the national politics reporter at Capital B, a Black-focused nonprofit newsroom where he covers the impact of policy and political movements on Black people in America. In 2025, he was a bronze winner in the Anthem Awards for his coverage of how the overhaul of the federal government is impacting Black communities, and he won a first place Green Eyeshade Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for his elections reporting. He was among the staff who won the Poynter Institute’s 2025 Robert G. McGruder Diversity Award for their efforts to boost diversity in journalism and the National Association of Black Journalists’ 2024 Best Practices Award for their dedication to advancing impactful coverage of issues affecting Black communities. Brandon has received fellowships from the Advancing Democracy initiative and the National Press Foundation.

He’s writing a book on Whitney Houston’s I’m Your Baby Tonight for Bloomsbury Publishing’s celebrated 33 1/3 series.

Previously, Brandon was a national political writer at CNN, where he covered the intersection of culture, identity, and politics and wrote Race Deconstructed, CNN’s newsletter on race and equality. Before joining CNN, he was the associate editor at New America, a co-host of Slate’s Outward podcast, a contributing writer at Pacific Standard, and an advocacy and communications associate at the Center for American Progress.

In 2018, Brandon was selected as a fellow for the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Taiwan-US Policy Program. Before moving to DC, he was a 2015-16 Luce Scholar in Thailand, and traveled between Thailand and Myanmar. Brandon was an editor and a staff writer at The Irrawaddy, an independent publication covering news in Myanmar. He was part of The Irrawaddy’s small group of journalists who covered the 2015 election, which many observers billed as the country’s most democratic contest in decades.

Prior to crisscrossing Asia, Brandon received an MPhil (a master’s) in politics from the University of Oxford in 2015. He was a 2012 American Fellow with Humanity in Action in Denmark and a 2012-13 Fulbright Scholar in Germany, and he received his BA, summa cum laude, in German studies and political science from Furman University in 2012.

Brandon’s work has been widely published, including in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Smithsonian, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, and has been recognized by The New York Times. He is a 2023-28 Council on Foreign Relations Term Member.