Tanya Ballard Brown
Editor
Tanya N. Ballard is a Southern girl, an optimist and a wild dreamer who laughs loudly and often.
As an editor for NPR.org, Tanya brainstorms and develops digital features; collaborates with radio editors and reporters to create compelling digital content that complements radio reports; manages digital producers and interns; and, line edits stories appearing on the website. Tanya also writes blog posts, commentaries and book reviews, has served as acting supervising editor for Digital Arts, Books and Entertainment; edited for Talk of the Nation and Tell Me More; and filed on-air spots for newscast. Occasionally, she sits in with the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast team and hosts NPR Facebook Live segments.
Projects she has worked on include Abused and Betrayed: People With Intellectual Disabilities And An Epidemic of Sexual Assault; Months After Pulse Shooting: 'There Is A Wound On The Entire Community'; Staving Off Eviction; Stuck in the Middle: Work, Health and Happiness at Midlife; Teenage Diaries Revisited; School's Out: The Cost of Dropping Out (video); Americandy: Sweet Land Of Liberty; Living Large: Obesity In America; the Cities Project; Farm Fresh Foods; Dirty Money, winner of a Sigma Delta Chi Award for Investigative Reporting, a Scripps Howard National Journalism Award and an Edward R. Murrow award; Friday Night Lives, winner of an Edward R. Murrow Award; and, WASP: Women With Wings In WWII, winner of a GRACIE Award.
Tanya is former editor for investigative and long-term projects at washingtonpost.com and during her tenure there coordinated with the print and digital newsrooms to develop multimedia content for investigative reports.
She is also a native of Charlotte, N.C., an alumna of N.C. A&T State University, and a former congressional fellow with the American Political Science Association. She has been a reporter or editor at GovExec.com/Government Executive magazine, The Tennessean in Nashville and the (Greensboro) News & Record.
In her free time, she fronts a band filled with other NPR staffers, sings show tunes, dances randomly in the middle of the newsroom, takes acting and improv classes, teaches at Georgetown University, does storytelling performances, and dreams of being a bass player. Or Sarah Vaughan. Whichever comes first. She lives in Washington, D.C.
