Jan Tenhaven works as a freelance writer and director for public television.  Currently he mainly works in the Arts & Science department at MDR television in Leipzig as well as  for Gebrueder Beetz Filmproduktion in Berlin. He also gives lectures at Electronic Media School (ems) in Potsdam-Babelsberg.

From 1998 to 2001, Jan Tenhaven was a television correspondent and bureau chief of APM Media in London and a director for London International Television (LITV). Before he had worked as a reporter and editorial staff member for various German television stations such as  MDR, WDR, VOX und SAT.1. He had begun his journalistic career as an assistant with Kilimann-Filmproduktion in Essen and as a freelance print journalist for the daily newspaper WAZ and the weekly paper DIE ZEIT.

Jan Tenhaven has studied Social Sciences at Ruhr-Universität Bochum and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He also took Journalism at  Freie Universität Berlin.  He received his master's degree in Social Sciences in 1996.

On many research and filming trips, he has gained extensive international experience. He also was an intern with  The Straits Times and Singapore Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) in Singapore. As a fellow of the RIAS Berlin Kommission, he spent a month at the  DeWitt Wallace Centre for Communication and Journalism, Duke University, North Carolina, USA.

Jan Tenhaven was an official participant of Discovery Campus Masterschool 2007.