A creator with many hats
Photo Credit: Catherine Castro
My name is Bianca Clendenin and I’m a Brooklyn based writer originally from the Bronx. I’m a producer, curator, and editor for the first digital savvy generation of Millennials and their younger Gen-Z counterparts. For the better half of the last decade, I’ve been a working journalist. It blended my desire to write creatively and speak power to truth. This Native New Yorker was always obsessed with sharing stories from disenfranchised voices on emerging platforms; where they drive the conversation and culture, but rarely get the recognition or accolades. My mission was to give space for those voices.
For the last four years, I was working at NowThis, as a social media strategist, mostly managing Facebook and Twitter. Eventually I decided to change my focus to Instagram in 2017, at a time where I realized many young people were engaging with news on the platform. We were missing out on a huge audience that was hungry for hard news. So I went out to prove that Instagram was not just a place for selfies, cats, and food porn, but also a reliable news source. As the Supervising Producer, I managed nine different accounts with a team of producers and publishers.
Besides my work in social media, I’ve has produced and hosted a dozens of videos. I was the Showrunner for the digital series MANE, a show about the intersection of hair and culture that was loosely inspired by my senior thesis on the history of Black American hair. I’ve also written for Medium’s Zora, NBCNews Think, NowThis, and Thrillist. Like most of my work, I deeply believe in covering the different facets of Black life and culture.
In the summer of 2020, I spent some time in the local news space as the Audience Engagement Editor for City Limits. Prior to her work at NowThis, she was a Headline Writer at Al Jazeera America. Currently, I’m the Instagram Editor, Video at the New York Times. I’ll be helping in their video efforts on the platform.
My journalism career has been also running parallel to my poetic ambitions. I’ve been self-publishing my work since I was 15. One could describe my work closer to prose or free-write because I prefer less structure with my writing. My first piece of prose was published in BX Writers Anthology Vol. 1.