Dwayne Bray is Vice President and Head of Storytelling at Andscape, the Black content studio that explores the depth of Black identity through its power in sports and culture.

Bray runs the day-to-day editorial operations at Andscape, formerly The Undefeated, including oversight of content surrounding sports analysis, HBCUs and colleges, lifestyles, and entertainment. Bray’s input extends from Andscape’s website and social channels to the streaming division, which produces, on average, a half dozen scripted and non-scripted films on Black culture each year.

At Andscape, Bray has served as executive producer on several critically acclaimed Hulu and ESPN+ films, including The Honorable Shyne, Hip Hop & the White House, and Eight on Eight, a documentary chronicling Kobe Bryant’s legacy of giving back to eight ordinary people.

Bray, an award-winning reporter, editor, and producer, joined Andscape in 2019 after 13 years in editorial management positions at ESPN. Before taking over Andscape’s editorial reins, he had been a senior writer for the digital site; writing reported stories on sports, music, and culture. Bray’s first notable project for The Undefeated was an in-depth profile of Grammy-winning musician Anderson .Paak published on March 10, 2021. Bray reported the four-part, 18,000-word story over a two-year period.

Bray joined ESPN in October 2006 as an on-site news editor for Monday Night Football, the NBA, and college football and basketball. In October 2007, he was promoted to senior coordinating producer, overseeing ESPN’s cross-platform enterprise journalism unit, including the video investigative team.

Bray ran ESPN’s investigative unit for nearly 12 years until April 2019. His team was responsible for numerous stories that examined on- and off-the-field issues for Outside the Lines, SportsCenter, and E:60. Written versions of the multiplatform stories were also published on ESPN.com.

Through Bray’s visionary leadership, the team was ambitious, reporting issues that covered an array of topics, such as complaints of sexual assault at Michigan State and Baylor universities, human trafficking at the World Cup in South Africa, and the groundbreaking coverage of brain injuries in football. The team uncovered corruption in youth sports across the country, including exposing an underground gambling ring in the gridiron hotbed of South Florida. The unit’s investigation of the relationship between the Syrian national soccer team and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad – “The Dictator’s Team” – earned an Emmy Award for Outstanding Sports Journalism in 2017.

Under Bray, the network’s enterprise unit won more than 50 national and international journalism honors, including two Peabody Awards, two Emmys for journalism, and four Edward R. Murrow Awards. The unit captured ESPN’s first Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Journalism Award in 2013 and received the Investigative Reporters and Editors’ Sports Award in 2019 for coverage of allegations of improprieties at Michigan State.

Prior to joining ESPN, Bray worked at the Dallas Morning News, first as the paper’s sports editor and later as the metro editor. At Sports Day, Bray supervised coverage of the Dallas Cowboys in the early- and mid-2000s and the Texas Rangers, among other teams. He was also in charge of the newspaper’s stable of sports columnists. Bray became the deputy managing editor in 2005, overseeing the metro, suburban, and religious coverage.

Bray’s journalism career includes serving as a news reporter covering the police beat at Dayton Daily News from 1989 to 1992 and the courts beat at the Los Angeles Times from 1993 to 1995. In California, he was a neighbor to the Andersons – .Paak’s family – and wrote about the attempted murder trial of .Paak’s father, Ronald Anderson, though Bray wasn’t aware that the defendant and his neighbors were related.

Bray began his career as a reporter at the Medina Gazette outside his hometown, Cleveland, in 1988.

A native of East Cleveland, Bray graduated from Cleveland State University (bachelor’s degree) and from Ohio State University (master’s degree).

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