Bryan is the senior manager for philanthropic development at The Associated Press where he manages the company’s growing grant portfolio.

Bryan is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and the former executive editor of the Cherokee Phoenix, the first Native American newspaper published in 1828. He serves on the board of directors for High Country News, where he has been an editor and consultant for the Indigenous Affairs desk. He is former associate director and president of the Native American Journalists Association (now Indigenous Journalists Association), where he developed programs including the Red Press Initiative to study perceptions of press freedom across Indian Country, and the Indigenous Voice Fund to support training and travel capacities for Indigenous journalists.

He continued this work as a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University, where he studied solutions to enhance Native American press freedom. He recently completed his master’s in journalism and has published his thesis “A Native American Free Press: The opportunities and threats to press freedom in Indian Country.”

Bryan, born in Oklahoma, is based in Monterey, California.