Finding and producing extraordinary stories from around the world, telling them without fear or favor.

Founded in 2021 by NYT bestselling authors Bradley Hope and Tom Wright, Project Brazen has a dozen projects under development. Billion Dollar Whale, Fat Leonard and Blood and Oil are being adapted for television. Project Brazen is represented by United Talent Agency.

Team

Founders

Co-Founder Bradley is the co-author of Billion Dollar Whale, Blood and Oil and forthcoming The Rebel and the Kingdom (Nov 2022). He spent seven years breaking stories and leading investigations at the Wall Street Journal from New York and London. Before that, he covered the Arab Spring from Cairo, Tripoli and Beirut. He started his career as a police reporter at the New York Sun in Manhattan. He is a Pulitzer finalist and a winner of the Gerald Loeb Award for International Reporting. He is also the co-founder of the experimental publication New York Moon.
Co-Founder Tom is the co-author of Billion Dollar Whale, and creator and host of Fat Leonard, a nine-part podcast about a military contractor who corrupted the U.S. Navy. He spent over twenty years reporting from Asia for the Wall Street Journal and has lived in Thailand, Indonesia, India, Hong Kong and Singapore. His investigations have exposed corporate and government corruption. Tom is a Pulitzer finalist, a Gerald Loeb winner, and he was honored in 2020 with the Shorenstein award from Stanford University for his services to journalism in Asia.

Staff

Consulting Producer and Editor Sid previously worked as an editor for The New York Times opinion page, Business Insider, The Atlantic, and Foreign Policy. He has written for a number of publications, including The New Yorker, Texas Monthly, and The New Republic. A graduate of The University of Texas, he grew up in the Houston area and lives in Brooklyn.
Associate Producer and Podcast Strategy Lead Francesca is an Italian producer, with a background in philosophy and theatre, who specialises in factual content making. Francesca joined Project Brazen in its early stages of development. Previously, she was on the production team of The Economist’s audio edition. Francesca is also running her production start-up and is the Associate Producer on Wondery’s award-winning podcast British Scandal.
Head of Research and Managing Producer Lucy is a British journalist and researcher based in San Francisco. She began her career writing about travel and archaeology (especially shipwrecks) for publications including The Times, The Travel Magazine and Current World Archaeology, before falling down the rabbit hole into the world of investigative journalism, where she has a particular interest in exposing corrupt governments, financial wrongdoing and corporate greed. Alongside her journalism career, Lucy works with boutique investigations firms conducting open source research in areas such as fraud investigations, litigation support and asset tracing.
Design LeadRyan is a Hong Kong-based creative technologist. He has previously worked at HYPEBEAST, FAKE Design, School of Creative Media at The City University of Hong Kong, and VIPELABS; he continues to operate a freelance digital design and development practice. Ryan has a background in art history and visual arts, receiving his MA from The University of Hong Kong and BA from The University of Chicago.
Associate Producer Neha is an independent multimedia journalist reporting across the globe. She tells stories that lie at the intersections of climate, gender, conflict and crisis, and human rights. Neha’s written and video work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, PBS NewsHour, and others. She has received fellowships from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, the United Nations Foundation, the Fuller Project, the Overseas Press Club, the International Women’s Media Foundation, and the Groundtruth Project.
Executive Producer & Director Nick is a documentary and commercial filmmaker based in London. Most recently the director of the feature documentary LOS ÚLTIMOS FRIKIS (Topic, 2021) and producer of REFLECTION: a walk with water (Tribeca, 2021). He was a founding director at Courageous, CNN's brand studio, where he directed series and commercials for many of the world's biggest brands, winning top industry awards including Cannes Lions, One Show, Webby, and Edward R Murrow Awards. As a documentary filmmaker, Nick has told stories in over two dozen countries and worked for major outlets including VICE, ABC News, and the New York Times. Raised on the coast of Maine, he is a graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts where he was a Willard TC Johnson Fellow in the Film & TV program.
Associate Producer Soobin joined Project Brazen in 2022 while studying investigative journalism at City, University of London. Before that, she was a literary translator and urbanist.
Project Manager Mariangel is a freelance producer and project manager for series, mini-series, documentaries, podcasts and digital content. For over a decade, she worked for HBO and MTV Networks; and has freelanced with Vice, The New York Times, AJ+, The Wall Street Journal, among others. She's also a self-taught photographer, editor-in-chief of a travel guide publication and producer of an independent art fair.
Programming Manager & Associate Producer Megan is an investigative journalist and producer based in London. She began her journalism career as editor of an online current affairs newsletter but later moved to study investigations, joining Project Brazen in 2022 during the final weeks of her MA in investigative journalism at City, University of London.
Audio-Visual Content Creator Based in, and originally from Belgrade, Serbia, but born and raised in Botswana, Andrija is a sound and interaction artist. Following his studies at NYU between Abu Dhabi, New York and Paris, he has worked on sound design for theatre and film, electroacoustic compositions for ensembles and soloists, interactive installations and audiovisual performances integrating video, light, and physical computing.
Head of Audio Clair is a highly experienced audio professional with over 20 years in the field, covering radio, streaming, digital audio, and podcasts. An engineer at heart, she has a deep understanding of all aspects of audio. Clair started her career in FM radio in Wellington, New Zealand and transitioned to digital when she moved to London in 2008. As a founding member of NTS Radio, she was involved in experimenting with sound and digital radio, setting up various stations in London. This passion for innovation in sound and technology led her to a position at Google, where she helped develop an audio-news product.
Social Media Manager and Host of Sirocco’s Now What? Salber Lee Williams is a Berlin-based Zimbabwean-born and raised actor, director, and content creator. An NYU Alum, having studied in Abu Dhabi, New York, Shanghai, and Sydney, she works across live performance, film and video, collaborating with various artists and companies globally.

Partners

Laurel is an Emmy-nominated freelance journalist, photographer, filmmaker, and National Geographic Explorer from Hong Kong
Mitchell is an award-winning crime and security journalist producing the Gateway project, a multi-season exploration of Europe’s cocaine trade. As a photographer and bureau chief for McClatchy Newspapers, Mitch covered the Syrian revolution, regional war against ISIS and later uncovered ISIS networks across Europe for BuzzFeed News and now frequently contributes to VICE World News and others on crime and intelligence matters. As a photographer, he’s covered wars, social issues and natural disasters around the world. His Twitter account leans heavily towards cat content. @mitchprothero
Kim is an Emmy-award winning journalist, analyst and author who covered the Middle East and American foreign policy for twenty years for the BBC and the Financial Times, from Beirut and Washington D.C. She is the author of "Black Wave," a NYT notable of 2020, and the NYT best seller "The Secretary: A Journey with Hillary Clinton from Beirut to the Heart of American Power."
Zach is a national security and intelligence journalist and former correspondent at Yahoo News and staff writer at the Aspen Institute. His investigative reporting has been featured in Politico, Foreign Policy, the Atlantic, and Axios, among other outlets. He also previously authored Axios's "Codebook" Newsletter. He is a past recipient of the Gerald R. Ford prize for Defense Reporting and a Livingston Award finalist.
Nicky was a reporter for The Guardian based in New York, where he developed a specialty in the messy intersection of internet subculture and politics. He left to launch New Statesman America, a US sister-site to the UK-based political magazine, then went into audio, writing and presenting Finding Q, a limited series made for Audible by Tortoise Studios, before joining Project Brazen for some projects.
Tim is a contributing writer for The Atlantic magazine. Previously he worked for Reuters news agency in Yangon and Chicago. His work has appeared in outlets including WIRED, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. He is a two-time finalist for The Livingston Award for International Reporting for work from Hong Kong, Myanmar and India. His book on Hong Kong will be published next year.
Simon is an award-winning writer and journalist whose work has been published by The Economist, the Financial Times, Fortune, the New York Review of Books and Travel and Leisure. He was previously senior editor at The Economist's features magazine 1843 and associate editor of Granta. In 2022 he won a Lowell Thomas award from the Society of American Travel Writers.

Advisors

David is the founder and Chief Executive of Pi Capital. He has financial interests in several other businesses and industries and has previously been involved as an investor, advisor, and board member of some of the most successful health and fitness companies in the world. David has acted as Project Brazen’s financial advisor from its early stages of development.

Representatives

Jake is an entertainment lawyer and founder of Levy Law. His practice encompasses a broad range of transactions in the entertainment and media industries, with an emphasis on television, motion picture, podcast, book publishing, celebrity branding/endorsement and music matters. He is a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). Prior to founding Levy Law, Jake was a partner at entertainment law firm Franklin, Weinrib, Rudell & Vassallo, working with the firm for over a decade. Before that, Jake was an associate at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett where he provided strategic counsel on transactional intellectual property and corporate law matters.
United Talent Agency's Partner & Head of Audio Oren Rosenbaum represents Project Brazen. Charged with leading UTA's VR initiatives, Oren's recent projects include placing director Jeff Nicholas with the Hulu/Live Nation VR concert performance series, plus a partnership between Turner Networks and Wattpad stories. Among his diverse client roster: DJ Khaled and music platform Musical.ly.
Eric is the Co-founder and Head of Entertainment of The Right Now, a Public Relations and Communications company based in Los Angeles. Among their clients are also HBO Max, FOX Entertainment's streaming service Tubi, Thunder Studios, CrimeDoor, UGG, Kendra Scott, Erewhon Markets and Billabong.

Pitch to us

Have a story worth telling? Project Brazen is always looking for ambitious, narrative non-fiction projects to produce as podcasts, documentaries and other formats.

We work and collaborate with journalists all over the world, to help develop their narratives in an engaging medium to captive audiences. Feel free to get in touch with an idea – even if it’s some reporting you have done previously but you feel could be the start of an exciting project.

Press