Bryan is a project manager at the Associated Press based in San Francisco, and serves on the board of directors for High Country News. In the mid-‘90s he began his journalism career as a freelance photojournalist, working for Portland’s first street newspaper The Burnside Cadillac. He later became the founding managing editor and board chair of Street Roots, steering the organization through its early development and growth as the city’s leading platform for those who can’t afford free speech.
Bryan was a founding project organizer for Dignity Village, and was involved in the early years of its development, from its first meetings in the Street Roots office as the Out of the Doorways campaign, until its eventual move to Sunderland Yard.
Bryan is an Oklahoma native and citizen of the Cherokee Nation, and in 2003 he returned to Oklahoma to join the Cherokee Phoenix, the first Native American newspaper originally published in 1828. He later became the executive editor of the Phoenix, and was instrumental in guiding the organization into the digital, multimedia era and prominence as one of the premiere Indigenous media outlets in North America.
Bryan has served as the associate director and president of the Native American Journalists Association, where he developed programs that empower Indigenous voices in journalism, and conducted research to better understand the intersection of journalistic freedom and Indigenous rights.
He is nearing completion of his master’s degree in journalism and documentary filmmaking from the University of Arkansas, and is an alum of the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University.
