David Tannenwald

About david

My work runs the gamut from sports journalism to public policy and business case studies to writing coaching and tutoring to speech writing. For me, the common thread across these categories is the belief that storytelling is a powerful tool to help people connect and make sense of the world. I’ve had the opportunity to help uncover and share great stories in many different places, ranging from Shanghai, China (where I reported on a college basketball game and cultural exchange) to Fargo, North Dakota (where I researched the National Guard’s response to historic flooding in the Red River Valley). My sports writing has been published by Harvard Magazine, SB Nation Longform, and Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, and I’ve discussed my work in interviews with NBC Sports Radio and local media outlets across the country.

Before becoming a writer, I was a finance and communications manager at New Heights Youth, a youth basketball and education nonprofit in New York City. I also spent a summer in Ghana (where I was a research assistant on an economic development study and a volunteer youth baseball coach) and did a semester-long internship at Northeastern University’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society. These experiences helped inspire me to become a writer by providing an up-close perspective on how sports intersect with important social issues and, more broadly, involve compelling stories.

I’m a 2008 graduate of Harvard College (magna cum laude) where I studied Government and, to be honest, was more or less terrified of writing. Back then, I figured I’d pursue a career in public service, having spent my summers in college as an intern on Capitol Hill, a research assistant at Harvard Kennedy School, and a high school speech and debate coach at the University of Texas National Institute in Forensics. (I also worked on the 2004 Presidential Campaign during a gap year after spending my freshman year at Brown University and before transferring to Harvard as a sophomore.) It was only toward the end of my junior year at Harvard, when I started working on my honors thesis about public spending on U.S. professional sports stadiums, that I began to think about a career involving sports and later sports writing.

I grew up in Newton, Massachusetts where I was a childhood basketball fanatic. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the skills to match that enthusiasm, something I learned the hard way in seventh grade when I failed to make it past the second round of tryouts for the middle school basketball team. This contributed to me developing interests outside of competitive sports, most notably joining the Newton South High School speech and debate team and placing third in the country in foreign extemporaneous speaking as a senior in 2003. When not writing, I enjoy playing basketball and tennis, cooking, reading, and distance running. Most recently, I ran the 2023 Boston Marathon for Dream Big!, a Massachusetts nonprofit that empowers girls and young women from low-income situations through sports and physical activities. I also ran the 2021 Falmouth Road Race for Shooting Touch, a nonprofit that uses the mobilizing power of basketball to bridge opportunity gaps for youth and women in Boston and Rwanda.