Description
Learn more about what it is like behind the scenes as a war reporter and international correspondent at CNN!
Clarissa Ward is CNN’s chief international correspondent. She has spent more than 15 years reporting from front lines in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt and Ukraine for ABC, CBS and Fox News.
A recipient of multiple journalism recognitions including two George Foster Peabody Awards, two Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Awards, five Emmy Awards and two Edward R. Murrow Awards for distinguished journalism, she is the author of the new book, ‘On All Fronts: The Education of a Journalist’ (Penguin Press), which details her singular career as a conflict reporter and how she has documented the violent remaking of the world from close range.
Known for her in-depth investigations and high-profile assignments, Ward most recently investigated the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny and subsequent trial. Last year she also uncovered a Russian troll operation in Ghana and Nigeria that was responsible for stirring up social unrest in the US. That reporting on Russia’s secret influence campaigns was named a finalist of the 2021 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award.
In 2019 her months-long, Emmy Award-winning investigation into Russia’s growing use of mercenaries – Putin’s Private Army – included the first on-camera interview with a former fighter for Wager, Russia’s most notorious private military contractor. After visiting a diamond mine with ties to a Russian oligarch in the Central African Republic, Ward and her team were followed and intimidated by a car full of Russians. After their reports came out, they were targeted by a Russian media propaganda campaign trying to discredit their reporting.
Ward has reported extensively in Syria since the start of the civil war in 2011, making multiple undercover assignments to the country including one in 2014 when she interviewed two Western fighters about why they joined the jihad there. One of the jihadists was a young Somali-American from the Midwest, making Ward the only Western journalist to have interviewed an American jihadist fighter inside Syria since the start of the civil war.
As one of the last Western reporters to visit rebel-held Aleppo, Ward was asked to address a UN Security Council meeting on the embattled Syrian city in 2016, stating “there are no winners in Aleppo.”
Ward has conducted many interviews with world leaders like U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2012 and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in 2013, challenging them both on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s brutal crackdown inside Syria, as well as former CIA Director and retired US Army Gen. David Petraeus and Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko after Iranian missiles took down a Ukrainian passenger jet earlier this year.
Ward graduated with distinction from Yale University, and in 2013 received an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Middlebury College in Vermont. She speaks fluent French and Italian, conversational Russian, Arabic and Spanish and basic Mandarin.
Fine Print
This is a virtual 1-hour meeting with Clarissa and you will receive a signed copy of her book "On All Fronts: The Education of a Journalist"
Expires one-year from purchase.
Signed book requires shipping.
Bid History
- Paddle#110$300
- Paddle#111$200
- Paddle#110$150