Jennifer Brandel

Jennifer Brandel is an award-winning journalist, founder and organizer whose work spans journalism, civic engagement, democracy, and entrepreneurship. She’s a dynamic, sought-after keynote speaker and workshop facilitator. The process innovations she’s created have spread globally, inspiring new practices, new units in organizations and even new organizations.

Brandel began her career in journalism reporting for outlets including NPR, CBC, WBEZ, The New York Times and Vice, picking up awards along the way. After launching the most successful experimental news series in WBEZ Chicago’s history, she founded Hearken in 2015, which helps institutions better listen and respond to their stakeholders.

Hearken took home the prize for "Best Bootstrap Company" at SXSW and won the News Media Alliance Accelerator. Brandel is a recipient of the Media Changemaker Prize by the Center for Collaborative Journalism.

In 2020 & 2022 she turned her attention to journalism’s role and relationship with democracy, launching the groundbreaking collaborative called Election SOS, and furthered the journalism systems change work through creating the Democracy SOS fellowship program.

She is a Columbia Sulzberger Fellow, RSA fellow, member of the Guild of Future Architects, and was named one of 30 World-Changing Women in Conscious Business. In her hometown, Brandel co-founded Civic Exchange Chicago which brings together civic startups in a collaborative learning community.

Brandel is also co-founder of Zebra’s Unite, a global movement and network of entrepreneurs, funders, investors, and allies creating a more ethical, inclusive and collaborative ecosystem for mission-based startups.

She’s been a voice and character actor for stories on This American Life, Wiretap, and Love + Radio. For fun, she co-founded Dance Dance Party Party, a worldwide women’s only freestyle dance gathering.

Her career has included grape-picking in Tasmania, ghost-writing for the late film director John Hughes, and traveling around the country interviewing Baha’i communities for the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States.

Brandel holds a BA in Art History and certificate in Integrated Liberal Studies from University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a certificate from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, and studied at the Université de Montréal and University of Melbourne, Australia.