Bio

Brandon Tensley is the national politics reporter at Capital B, a Black-focused nonprofit newsroom where he covers how policy and political movements shape Black life in America. In 2025, he won an Anthem Award for his coverage of how the overhaul of the federal government is affecting Black communities, as well as a Green Eyeshade Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for his elections coverage. He was also part of the Capital B team recognized with the Poynter Institute’s 2025 Robert G. McGruder Diversity Award and the National Association of Black Journalists’ 2024 Best Practices Award. He 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 acclaimed 33 1/3 series. It will be the first book on the late icon for the series.

Previously, Brandon was a national political writer at CNN, where he covered the intersection of culture, identity, and politics and authored Race Deconstructed, CNN’s flagship 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, traveling between Thailand and Myanmar. Brandon was an editor and a staff writer at The Irrawaddy, where he helped to cover Myanmar’s 2015 election—which was billed as the country’s most democratic contest in several decades.

Prior to crisscrossing Asia, Brandon received an MPhil (a master’s) in politics from the University of Oxford in 2015. He was a 2012-13 Fulbright Scholar in Germany and a 2012 American Fellow with Humanity in Action in Denmark, 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.