Khanya Brann, a former resident of Elkins Park and a Senior Communications Advisor for the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, was recently featured by The New York Carib News in an article titled “Trinidadian, From Intern to Biden White House Staff“.

According to the story, Brann, now 28, relocated to Elkins Park with her Trinidadian family in 2009. A graduate of Norwood-Fontbonne Academy in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia, she went on to attend Temple University to study journalism, graduating in May 2019, two years after she became eligible to vote in U.S. elections.

“I wanted to be a feature writer and work at the Philadelphia Inquirer, but they weren’t hiring,” she told Carib News.

in July 2019, Brann accepted the position as a paid communications intern for the Biden campaign.

“When Biden began his bid for the presidency, there was a lot of work to do from the ground up. It was fun, certainly stressful, and a steep learning curve because I had no political experience. I got a good foundation for the work I do now,” she said.

She went on to serve as a communications fellow for Philly Counts, a project related to the city’s census, from January to July 2020, and then rejoined the Biden/Harris campaign, this time as a communications associate for Pennsylvania. In January 2020, she moved to Washington D.C. and took a senior communications assistant and special assistant position in a White House office a short distance from Biden’s Oval Office.

Brann spent a year as the deputy press secretary for the Environmental Protection Agency. In late October 2023, she returned to the White House to assume her current position.

“I recently went to a party hosted by Vice President Kamala Harris, and she said, ‘Sometimes we have to hold joy and pain in the same hand at the same time.’ I will hold on to that thought. She reminded us the work continues. It never stops,” she said.

Brann said she will visit her first office in the West Wing, next to Biden’s office, on January 6, 2025, for a final farewell. For more about Brann’s career, you can read her biography on the White House’s website here.

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Photo: LinkedIn