Grant commenced his tertiary education at the University of New South Wales, then to the Australian National University and got a job as a copy boy at The Canberra Times. He spent several years as a news presenter on the Australian Macquarie Radio Network and Seven and ABC television networks, along with a stint at CNNInternational in Hong Kong and Beijing, responsible for the news network's coverage of China.
In 1994, as host of the Seven Network current affairs program Real Life he won the Logie Award for Most Popular Current Affairs Program.
In 2007, alongside news presenter Mary Kostakidis he took on the role of co-presenter of the one-hour 6.30 pmSBS World News Australia bulletin. His former wife Karla Grant is also employed on the SBS program Living Black.
In September 2007, Grant was announced presenter and producer of ABC Local Radio's Indigenous programmeSpeaking Out which focuses on culture, lifestyle and political issues affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in Australia. Grant replaced Kerry Klimm and in 2008, Grant was replaced by Rhianna Patrick. In December 2007, Grant resigned from SBS World News Australia and was replaced by Anton Enus. In 2008, Grant joined the World Bank as Senior Communications Officer, based in Sydney.
In 2009 Grant was appointed UAE correspondent for CNN. Based in CNN's new Abu Dhabi news-gathering and production centre, Grant covers stories from both the UAE and the surrounding region and hosts Prism. Grant returned to Australia in 2013 and hosted a nightly late night news program NewsNight forSky News Australia, which aired weeknights at 11pm. From 2014 he started hosting Sky News Australia's Reporting Live with Stan Grant at 6pm, a nightly news program reporting on the serious news stories of the day. In April he hosted Crimes that Shook Australia, a six-part television drama series broadcast onFOXTEL.
In 2016, Grant will host a nightly news bulletin on NITV titled The Point with Stan Grant.
In 2013, Grant published a memoir, The Tears of Strangers, which details the political and social changes of Indigenous Australians over the period of 40 years, focusing particularly on generations of the Wiradjuri people. Grant hopes to develop the memoir into a play or a documentary.
Grant's second book, Talking To My Country, was published in February 2016. The origins of the book came from the abuse of Adam Goodes in 2015 and how it made Australia confront the darkest parts of its country, which Grant says was about 'shared history and our failure to reconcile'. In a review for The Saturday Paper, Talking To My Country was described as "Australia viewed from the riverbank on the edge of town; great affection mixed with discomfort about "Advance Australia Fair".
Grant is a member of the Wiradjuri tribe of Indigenous Australians from the south-west inland region of New South Wales. The Wiradjuri also have roots in inner Victoria, which is where he spent much of his childhood.
Grant was married to Karla Grant with whom he had three children. A well publicised marriage break-up in 2000, prior to the Sydney Olympic Games, resulted from his starting a relationship with fellow TV personality Tracey Holmes. After criticism from News Corporation tabloids, while News was involved in the C7 Sport dispute with Seven, his employment at the Seven Network was terminated as a result, and he and Tracey Holmes moved to Hong Kong. Some news articles have reported that both were fired from their positions with 7, but in a 2015 interview, Holmes stated that they had both resigned in protest over 7 trying to dictate their living arrangements. Holmes stated that she felt there would have been no controversy if Grant had been a white man. Grant and Holmes have one son together.
Stan Grant is an Ambassador of the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation.
