Brandon Tensley is a national politics reporter at Capital B, where he covers the impact of policy and political movements on Black people in America and the Black political influencers shaping our future. Previously, he was a national political writer at CNN, where he covered the intersection of culture, identity, and politics and wrote Race Deconstructed, CNN’s newsletter about race and equality.
Before joining CNN, Brandon was the associate editor at New America, a co-host of Slate’s Outward podcast, a contributing writer at Pacific Standard, and the advocacy and communications associate for the Poverty to Prosperity Program 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, culture, and politics in Myanmar and Southeast Asia. He was among The Irrawaddy’s small group of journalists who covered Myanmar’s 2015 election, which many observers billed as the country’s most democratic election 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, and Foreign Affairs, and has been recognized by The New York Times.
Brandon Tensley 