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Clarissa Ward Biography

Clarissa Ward is an American television journalist and currently she is a CNN chief international correspondent based in London. Before joining CNN she was working in CBS News based in London and before her CBS News position, She was a Moscow-based news correspondent for ABC News program.

For more than 15 years She has reported from front lines across the world from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen to Georgia — during the Russian incursion in 2008 — and Ukraine.

Clarissa Ward Age

She was born on January 30,1980 in New York City, U.S. She is 38 years old as of year 2018.

Clarissa Ward Family

The American reporter Clarissa belongs to white ethnicity from European heritage. Ward’s family is from London and New York. The rest of the information about her life growing up as well as information on her parents and siblings she has not yet revealed to the media.

Clarissa Ward Education

She graduated from Yale University and she also holds an honorary doctor of letters degree from Middlebury College.

Clarissa Ward Languages

Clarissa can speak seven different languages including French, Mandarin, Arabic, Italian, Russian, Spanish and English

Clarissa Ward Husband|Clarissa Spouse| Clarissa Married|Clarissa Partner

Ward at the present day we can say that, she isn’t married and doesn’t have a husband, spouse, partner or dating any man. This is due to her secretive life she is living. she has always been reluctant to disclose her privacy and she has even never talked about it to any media.  Ward is so attractive we hope to see her getting married soon in the future to the husband of her choice.

Clarissa Ward Cnn| Clarissa Ward 60 Minutes

CNN announced on 21 September 2015 that Ward was joining the network and reporting for all of CNN’s platforms though she will remain based in London. She spoke at a United Nations Security Council meeting on the situation in the civil war-torn Aleppo, based on her 10+ years’ experience of being a war correspondent.  She served as a foreign correspondent for four years and contributed regularly to ’60 Minutes.

CNN named Ward its chief international correspondent in July 2018, succeeding Christiane Amanpour in the role.

Clarissa Ward Photo

Clarissa Ward ABC

Ward was an ABC News correspondent based in Moscow From October 2007 to October 2010. Ward reported from Russia for all ABC News broadcasts and platforms, this includes “World News with Charles Gibson”, “Nightline” and “Good Morning America”, as well as ABC News Radio, ABC News Now. Her assignment in Russia she covered the Russian Presidential elections. During the time of the Russian intervention into Georgia territory she was in Georgia. She was later transferred to Beijing to serve as the ABC News Asian Correspondent, where she covered the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan. She has also covered the war in Afghanistan.

Clarissa Ward CBS News

Ward’s CBS career began as the network’s foreign news correspondent in October 2011. Beginning January 2014 she was a contributor for 60 Minutes and served as a fill-in anchor on CBS This Morning.

Clarissa covered many major foreign news stories including the Syrian Uprising, Chinese civil rights activist Chen Guangcheng’s stay at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and subsequent United States – China negotiations, and the 2014 Ukrainian revolution.

In 2012 in her first 60 Minutes report Clarissa and her team braved sniper-fire and aerial bombardments in the Syrian city of Aleppo to deliver one of the first reports examining the growth of Islamic extremism within the opposition. Clarissa reported on the unrest in Egypt in July 2013,  filming in the same area where CBS correspondent Lara Logan had been sexually assaulted a few years prior. Clarissa returned to Syria undercover in October 2014, to interview two Western jihadis – a young American man and a former Dutch soldier – about their paths to radicalism.

Clarissa Ward Net worth| Clarissa Salary

Clarissa is young and very talented CNN’s media personality who has an estimated net worth of over $1 million dollars approx. She is reported to receive around $200,000 as her annual salary from CNN.

Clarissa Ward Awards

On May 21, 2012 Clarissa received a George Foster Peabody Award, in New York City for her journalistic coverage inside Syria during the Syrian uprising. Washington State University announced in October 2014, that Clarissa would receive the 2015 Murrow Award for International Reporting in April 2015. Clarissa has also received two Emmy Awards, an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Silver Baton, and honors from the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association.

Clarissa Ward Aleppo

Clarissa reported the situation in Aleppo. She said that first she visited Aleppo in the summer of 2012 and she remember the drive towards the city, the closer you got to it the less power there was, and they drove along in a tense silence with this eerie darkness all around them.
But as you got closer you started to hear sounds, the sounds of shelling. At first a dull thud, then louder and louder.
Eventually they reached a place in the area surrounding Aleppo called Hraytan and by now the shelling was no longer a dull thud, it was artillery landing just a few hundred meters away from us.
They grabbed their gear and dove into the basement of the house where we were staying, where they were the guests of several Syrian families.

At around 2 am the shelling finally stopped and they crawled into bed, exhausted and then, just a few hours later at 5 am, the planes started buzzing overhead. It is really difficult to describe the pit that forms in your stomach when you hear those planes because you know something terrible is about to happen, but you have no idea where it’s going to happen.
You are paralyzed.
She looked around the room at the rest of her colleagues and my driver — a Syrian man from Tal Rifaat — Ayman, looked at her and they made eye contact and he kind of just shrugged: “Allahu A’lam” (only God knows).

And they both understood in that moment that they were absolutely powerless to protect themselves.
Moments later the room shook as the plane dropped a barrel bomb, and you heard the doctors talking about barrel bombs nearby.
The target in fact appeared to be a hospital, fortunately it had missed its target and hit a family home instead.
Later that day they drove into the city center and she was blown away by the scale of the destruction.

Clarissa Ward Greenland

CNN’s Clarissa once traveled to Greenland to examine how the melting ice sheet is affecting coastal sea levels in, “Global Warning: Arctic Melt.”

Clarissa Ward Hijab

Clarissa Ward Nationality

She is An American. Having been in New York City, U.S and raised there.

Clarissa Ward Interview

CNN’s Clarissa Ward on Her Stunning Report From Afghanistan

Talk a little bit about how you managed to gain access into a world so reclusive to Westerners? What was it like?

Clarissa Ward: “When I originally approached Afghan filmmaker Najibullah Quraishi, who has done a lot of work with the Taliban and told him that Salma Abdelaziz, the producer, and I wanted to actually go in with him and spend time with the Taliban; he actually laughed and said he didn’t think that was possible. But then by the end of the lunch, I think he saw how serious we were and how committed we were to telling this story. And so, he went away and thought about it and went to some intermediaries with this idea to the Taliban, and after some time they agreed to it in principle…

The bigger hurdle was persuading CNN management that it was doable in terms of the risk and the security situation. And I think what really helped to put peoples’ minds at ease are the ongoing talks in Doha and the sense that the Taliban feels like there is real momentum to these peace talks and that U.S. troops might withdraw and so it would not be politically expedient for them to kidnap a Western journalist…

It took many, many months to get everyone from the Taliban to CNN on the same page vis-à-vis how it would work…

The other major risk on the ground is airstrikes from the U.S. or the Afghan Air Force. We did not tell the U.S. military that we were going for ethical reasons — I don’t think that would have been appropriate. But that was something we were very mindful of while we were there and we looked in a lot to how many strikes have been in the area, and when and what time and what situation, etc.”

What was the most surprising thing that you learned from your time reporting behind the lines? 

Clarissa Ward:  “I think that the most striking thing was that, while the Taliban has clearly not changed fundamentally — ideologically, they still are incredibly insular and they have a very austere and draconian interpretation of Islamic law and Sharia law — there is no question that they are definitely trying to be a bit more pragmatic. They are trying to show that they can cooperate with the Afghan government and run hospitals together, run schools together. They’re wanting to show that they care about their public image. That they can govern. That they’re grown ups and they can sit at the negotiating table with the U.S.

And the question that was sort of left lurking in my mind was, ‘how sincere is this pragmatism and how long does this last; or does the Taliban just really view this as a means to an end — the sooner they can get U.S. troops to withdraw, the sooner they can go about reestablishing their full control over Afghanistan, and will that pragmatism still be intact in that scenario.’

What was also striking, talking to people on the ground in these rural areas, is just that women’s education is not a priority for them. And so the Taliban is trying to focus on what people in these areas see as a priority. Things like justice, where they have an edge over the Afghan government because they don’t have the same issue of corruption. They can deliver quick, if harsh, justice.”

Through your experience, do you think that a deal is within reach between the U.S. and Taliban?

Clarissa Ward: “The Taliban were very explicit with us that they did not want us to ask political questions. We went ahead and asked them anyway, but the answer we were given when we did ask deliberately political questions was, ‘this is a question that should really be referred to the Taliban’s political leadership.’

I think privately, the sense I very much got was that they do believe a deal is within reach… the kind of language they were using is, ‘when we are in full control and ruling the Islamic emirates…’ So, the very fact that they are talking in these terms, I think, gives you a pretty clear idea that, while they are not explicitly commenting on the peace talks, they are pretty confident they are going their way.”

You’ve said “I fundamentally believe that this story could not have been done by a man.” Can you elaborate a little on that? And how was it like being a woman reporting from within the Taliban? Did you ever feel uncomfortable? Did you ever feel in danger?

Clarissa Ward: “I think being a woman in this situation was a blessing and a curse. A blessing in the sense that you are not seen in the same way as a Western male — as being hostile, as being an enemy combatant, as being potentially a spy. There’s a degree of magnanimity towards a female reporter that I think may not be afforded to a male colleague.

We had to wear the full facial veil — the niqab — when we were out in public. And, on the one hand, that was obviously not a lot of fun because it’s annoying, it impedes your work and it’s not great for doing pieces to camera. But on the other hand, it made our identities just that little bit less conspicuous. People obviously knew that we were outsiders and that we were journalists, but they couldn’t see, from looking at us, that we were Americans. And while the Taliban leadership knew that we were Americans, the people on the ground did not have a sense of where exactly we were from. They just knew that we were foreigners.

The other main point about doing this as women, was that we had really extraordinary, unprecedented access to women living under Taliban rule. That is something that we have not seen anywhere before since 9/11 because men, in Afghanistan, have absolutely no access to women. We were talking to mothers in the clinic. We were sleeping on the floor next to women and children, members of the family. And through conversations with them, you really get a different, richer, more nuanced perspective on this whole conflict… what they want to see is peace. What they want to see is improvement to their daily lives.

Speaking to your question of how you felt as a woman in terms of being uncomfortable — there was this extraordinary moment where the military commander arrived and was upset that we were going to potentially walk on the street with the Taliban governor. And, so, we had to walk behind the men. And that was somewhat galling — I’ve certainly never been asked to do that before in my career. At the same time, we were treated politely. There was no sense of hospitality or friendliness. It was extremely frosty — largely we were ignored. My colleague, who is Egyptian-American would say ‘Salam Aleichem’ to people and they would not return her ‘Salam,’ for example. So, it was almost like wearing a cloak of invisibility — with all the benefits that entails, but also with the downsides that it comes with.”

What would you like people to know about your experience?

Clarissa Ward: “Seventeen years after this war began and with more than 2,300 U.S. troops killed, more than $1 trillion of U.S. taxpayers’ money spent — and traveling around this area, and seeing how little life has changed for these people. How few improvements they’ve actually seen. And now, knowing that the Taliban is really within grasping range of, what it would view as, a decisive victory, I think Americans really have a right to know what the country looks like — what the U.S. has been able to achieve, what they very clearly have not been able to achieve — so that they can ask themselves the question of whether this was worth it. Whether this can every count as a victory. Or whether this war has been lost and what that means for the country going forward, when it comes to foreign policy.”

Adopted from :mediaite