Ward has called reporting on the streets of Kabul in the wake of the Taliban’s takeover “one of the most extraordinary experiences” of her career. The 41-year-old wrote on her Instagram on Aug. 17, “I am too sleep-deprived to begin to do justice to it with words but let’s just say that every once in a while as a journalist, you get a front row seat on history. I write in my book, On All Fronts, about the experience of spending time with Taliban in the north a couple of years ago. Never could I have imagined then that they would take the capital in a matter of hours with hardly a shot fired.” With so much at stake for her and the people she’s reporting on, get to know Clarissa Ward and how she became one of the most fearless journalists working today.
Who is Clarissa Ward?
Ward is CNN’s chief international correspondent. Prior to CNN, the journalist—who was born in London and is fluent in French and Italian, while also speaking conversational Russian, Arabic, Spanish and basic Mandarin—worked for CBS, ABC News, and FOX News Channel. Ward found her calling to be a journalist after the September 11 attacks. “For me, it was all about 9/11. And I was a senior studying comparative literature at Yale. I was into acting and making movies and publishing magazines. And suddenly, like a sledgehammer, I was hit by 9/11. And I became completely addicted to the news,” she shared in an interview with NPR in 2020. “It suddenly dawned on me that I felt I had a calling—that I wanted to contribute to this broader effort to try to act as some kind of a translator, almost, between different worlds. Of course, you know, I was 22 years old, so there was a lot of hubris at play, and I really had very little idea of what that would actually entail. But that is what really moved me to become a journalist.” Over the course of her career, Ward has won multiple Emmys, Peabodys and Edward R. Murrow Awards. The aide of an Hamas leader has called Ward “a hunter,” something she took as a “compliment.” “I always knew I wanted to be on air and travel the world and tell people’s stories,” she told Forbes in 2013. “I wanted to convey something from other cultures to the U.S. - and vice versa.”
When did Clarissa Ward join CNN?
The award-winning journalist joined CNN in 2015 after serving as a foreign correspondent for CBS News, per her CNN profile. Joining CNN was no doubt a full circle moment for Ward whose career in journalism started at the network back in 2002 as an intern at CNN’s Moscow bureau.
Is Clarissa Ward married?
The Emmy winner is married to Philipp von Bernstorff. Funny enough, when the pair met at a dinner party in Moscow back in 2007, von Bernstorff—who’s a German count!—told Ward, “I think war correspondents are egomaniacs.” After nearly a decade together, the couple exchanged vows in a 2016 ceremony at London’s Chelsea Old Town hall. “Perhaps covering war does give you a slightly different perspective,” she told Town & Country of her wedding. “In the grand scheme of things to freak out about, this is not one of them.”
Does Clarissa Ward have children?
Ward became a mother in 2018 with the arrival of her son Ezra Albrecht Nikolas Nour von Bernstorff. The couple’s second child, son Caspar Hugo Augustus Idris von Bernstorff, was born two years later. “On Monday June 29th, 2020 at 929am Caspar Hugo Augustus Idris von Bernstorff was born and three became four,” she wrote on Instagram. “The most blissful blessing!” The journalist reflected on her first pregnancy in a 2020 piece for ELLE titled “Pregnant on the Front Lines.” In it, Ward admitted that she “had always viewed becoming a mother as perhaps the least extraordinary thing a woman could do,” which is why she “was determined to be different, to take pregnancy and childbirth in stride.” The On All Fronts author recalled being on assignment in freezing Greenland and unable to sleep. “My mind was racing. I didn’t want pregnancy to change the way I worked or lived, and yet it was already clear that there were big changes happening in my body,” she wrote. While pregnant with her first child, Ward also traveled to the Caribbean to cover the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, as well as the border between Bangladesh and Myanmar, and Yemen. When she told her husband that she wanted to go Yemen, where a war was going on, he reminded his wife, “This isn’t just about you anymore.” Throughout her trip, Ward felt her “baby wasn’t kicking as much,” which gave her anxiety attacks. “Where are you, my love?” she whispered while laying on her sleeping bag. “Give me a kick so I know you’re okay.” Ward revealed, “After some time, I felt a squirm inside of me, then a gentle kick. I wept with relief and ached with love for this mysterious creature whom I had never met. I suddenly fully understood what Philipp had meant. It wasn’t about me anymore. I was a vessel. And it was a privilege.” The CNN correspondent told NPR in 2020 that if she could go back, she doesn’t think she’d go on the Yemen trip. “Now I understand it differently—that the real risk was that if there had been some kind of a complication with the pregnancy, I simply wouldn’t have been able to get to a proper medical facility,” she said. “But I would say the main way that my work has been affected by the birth of now my two boys - there’s this intense emotional connection that I cannot turn off now. It was always upsetting to see a child in pain in any kind of a conflict arena. Now I find it borderline unbearable. I will weep. I hope there is more compassion in my reporting. And, as crazy as it might sound, I would also like to see more mothers covering war because believe it or not, and as ridiculous as it may sound, I think things might look a little different if there were.”
Where did Clarissa Ward go to school?
Ward graduated with distinction from Yale University. In 2013, the CNN correspondent received an honorary doctor of letters degree from Middlebury College. Next, 5 Things You Didn’t Know About Anderson Cooper
