Vicky Ward

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Not to be confused with Vicki Ward or Victoria Ward.

Vicky Ward
Ward in 2010
Born
Victoria Penelope Jane Ward

(1969-07-03) 3 July 1969 (age 56)
Chelmsford, England
CitizenshipUnited States
Alma materTrinity Hall, Cambridge
Occupation(s)Investigative journalist
author
columnist
editor
commentator
EmployerCNN
Spouse
Matthew Doull
​
​
(m. 1995; div. 2010)​
Children2

Victoria Penelope Jane Ward (born 3 July 1969)[1] is a British-born American author, investigative journalist, editor-at-large, and television commentator. She was a Senior Reporter at CNN and a former magazine and newspaper editor who has featured in The New York Times Best Seller list.

Early life and education

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Vicky Ward was born Victoria Penelope Jane Ward on 3 July 1969 in Chelmsford, Essex. She is the daughter of Simon Charles Ward, a retired London financier,[2] and Jillian Ward (née East), a graduate of Trinity College Dublin.[3] She has two younger sisters, Antonia Ward and Lucinda Ward.[3] Ward attended Benenden School from 1983 to 1987 and later earned a BA and MA in English literature from Trinity Hall, Cambridge, during 1988–1991.[4][5]

Career

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Prior to moving to the U.S. in 1997, Ward was a columnist and feature writer for The Independent, a British newspaper. In New York City, she was the features and news features editor of the New York Post (1999–2001) and Tina Brown's executive editor at Talk (2000–2001).

Ward worked as a contributing editor to Vanity Fair (2001–2012) as well as a columnist for the London Evening Standard (2007–2011). Her Vanity Fair articles covered a wide array of subject matter: politics, finance, art, and culture and society.[6] Among other things, she wrote about Hewlett Packard, Morgan Stanley, Bruce Wasserstein, a failed coup in Africa, Kate Middleton, Valerie Plame, counter-terrorist czar Dick Clarke, Brooke Astor, Veronica Hearst, the Guggenheim, the Getty, Phillips de Pury Luxembourg, St. Barths, Vivendi, Jeffrey Epstein, Washington interns, the Fairfield Greenwich hedge fund and Bernie Madoff.

From July 2017 to July 2019, Ward served as editor-at-large for HuffPost and Huffington Post Highline, their long-form magazine. HuffPost exclusives written by Ward included interviews with Blackwater's Erik Prince,[7] Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen,[8] and Anthony Scaramucci on the White House and why he was fired.[9] For The Huffington Post Highline, Ward wrote articles about Vice President Mike Pence's Chief of Staff, Nick Ayers[10] and Robert and Rebekah Mercer's influence in the 2016 election.[11] Charlie Rose later interviewed her on this piece.[12]

In July 2019, Ward was named Senior Reporter at CNN.[13] For CNN, her reporting included pieces on the rise of the Jeffrey Epstein mystique,[14] the scrutiny of Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale's business ties,[15] and a look at Donald Trump's ongoing fight to keep his tax returns private.[16]

Ward is also editor-at-large at Town & Country magazine, where she writes about culture. Her pieces have included an article on the late, seminal Russian art collector Sergei Shchukin,[17] Frank Gehry's first-ever sailboat design,[18] and a $2 billion fraud in the modern art world including the Knoedler art trial.[19]

In 2016, Ward wrote investigative long-form articles for Esquire including a profile of the Russian-born cyber-terrorism expert Dmitri Alperovitch, and a piece on senior presidential aide Jared Kushner,[20][21] about whom she later, in 2019, wrote a book.

Ward has contributed to, among others, the Financial Times, The New York Times, the London Times, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, the UK Spectator magazine, British Vogue, US Harper's Bazaar and Porter. She has also had on-air contracts with CNBC and Bloomberg TV. She appears regularly on MSNBC's Morning Joe.[citation needed]

Ward is the author of four books: the New York Times bestseller The Devil's Casino in 2010,[22] The Liar's Ball in 2014, and the New York Times bestseller Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. in 2019.[23] Centering on the story of real estate developer Harry Macklowe, The Liar's Ball was reported to be in development as a feature film by J.C. Chandor and A24 Productions.[24] The New York Times bestseller The Idaho Four: An American Tragedy' about the 2022 killing of four University of Idaho students, co-authored with the best-selling novelist James Patterson.

Ward appeared in the 2017 documentary film Blurred Lines: Inside the Art World.[25]

In 2019, Ward said her 2003 profile of Jeffrey Epstein in Vanity Fair had included on-the-record accounts of Annie and Maria Farmer (who filed the earliest known criminal complaints about Epstein), but that they were later stricken from Ward's article after Epstein pressured the magazine's editor Graydon Carter.[26][27] While researching Epstein, Ward was pregnant with twins and reported that she felt compelled to hire security protection for their neonatal intensive care unit after Epstein had threatened their wellbeing.[28][29][30]

In June 2020, she joined the Council on Foreign Relations.[31] She is the host and producer of Chasing Ghislaine, which was released July 15, 2021 as an Audible Original podcast (and hit #5 on Audible's Weekly Bestsellers List) and as a docuseries premiering on discovery+ on November 22, 2021 and ID on December 3, 2021. On November 29, 2021, she launched the newsletter Vicky Ward Investigates. She is the host and co-producer of the Audible Original podcast Pipeline to Power: The 40-Year Plan to Capture the Supreme Court.[32] In September 2023, she was appointed as a Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford. [33]

Her most recent book about the 2022 killing of four University of Idaho students, The Idaho Four: An American Tragedy (Little, Brown and Company), co-authored with the best-selling novelist James Patterson, was released on July 14, 2025.[34]

Bibliography

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  • 2010 The Devil's Casino: Friendship, Betrayal and the High Stakes Games Played Inside Lehman Brothers, Wiley, ISBN 978-0470540862
  • 2014 The Liar's Ball: The Extraordinary Saga of How one Building Broke the World's Toughest Tycoons, Wiley, ISBN 978-1118295311
  • 2019 Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, St. Martin's Press, New York, ISBN 978-1250185952
  • 2025 "The Idaho Four: An American Tragedy", co-authored with James Patterson, Little, Brown and Company,

Personal life

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Ward met Matthew Doull in the 1990s when both were working at The Daily Telegraph.[35] They have two children together, twins Orlando and Lorcán, born in early 2003.[36] Ward and Doull later divorced. Ward has lived in New York City since 1997, and is a naturalized U.S. citizen as of 2017.[5]

A portrait of Ward, taken by photographer Jason Bell, was exhibited in the British National Portrait Gallery in 2011 as part of Bell's series "An Englishman in New York".[37] The series, including the portrait of Ward, was also published as a book by the same title.[37]

References

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  1. ^ "Vicky Ward - National Portrait Gallery". npg.org.uk. Archived from the original on 21 June 2020. Retrieved 12 February 2020.
  2. ^ Hampson, Sarah (19 April 2010). "Vicky Ward: Wall Street tattler". The Globe and Mail. Archived from the original on 11 November 2020. Retrieved 15 February 2020.
  3. ^ a b Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage: 107th Edition volume 1, page 1360
  4. ^ "Vicky Ward Speaker, Keynote, Booking Agent, Bureau". Speakers.com. Archived from the original on 12 February 2020. Retrieved 12 February 2020.
  5. ^ a b "Vicky Ward - Senior Reporter". CNN Profiles. Archived from the original on 19 February 2020. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
  6. ^ "Articles". Vicky Ward. Archived from the original on 31 March 2020. Retrieved 13 February 2020.
  7. ^ Ward, Vicky (31 August 2017). "Blackwater's Erik Prince On How He Got Into The White House". HuffPost. Archived from the original on 15 February 2020. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
  8. ^ "Michael Cohen Speaks: Trump Exec Admits Russia Dealings Were Gross, But Not Illegal". Vicky Ward. 30 August 2017. Archived from the original on 24 March 2019. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  9. ^ "Why The Mooch Lost His Cool". Vicky Ward. 1 August 2017. Archived from the original on 24 March 2019. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  10. ^ Ward, Vicky (15 March 2018). "Mike Pence's Man In The Swamp". Highline. HuffPost. Archived from the original on 5 April 2019. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  11. ^ "The Blow-It-All-Up Billionaires". Vicky Ward. 17 March 2017. Archived from the original on 24 March 2019. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  12. ^ "Vicky Ward", Charlie Rose, 17 March 2017, archived from the original on 24 March 2019, retrieved 7 January 2019
  13. ^ Katz, A. J. (29 July 2019). "HuffPost Editor-at-Large Vicky Ward Is Joining CNN as Senior Reporter". TVNewser. Adweek. Retrieved 13 February 2020.
  14. ^ Ward, Vicky (13 August 2019). "CNN Exclusive: The rise of the Jeffrey Epstein mystique". CNN. Archived from the original on 8 December 2019. Retrieved 13 February 2020.
  15. ^ Ward, Vicky (30 August 2019). "Pro-Trump super PAC paid thousands to firm owned by Trump's campaign manager". CNN. Archived from the original on 5 October 2021. Retrieved 13 February 2020.
  16. ^ Ward, Vicky (14 October 2019). "Trump wanted to release his taxes in 2013 to show how smart he was for paying so little". CNN. Archived from the original on 8 December 2020. Retrieved 3 November 2020.
  17. ^ "How a Russian Collector Changed the Course of Modern Art". Vicky Ward. 9 September 2016. Archived from the original on 24 March 2019. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  18. ^ "Frank Gehry's First-Ever Yacht Looks Like Nothing You've Ever Seen". Vicky Ward. 5 October 2015. Archived from the original on 24 March 2019. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  19. ^ "Inside the Trial All the Billionaires Are Watching". Vicky Ward. 2 February 2016. Archived from the original on 24 March 2019. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  20. ^ Ward, Vicky (18 August 2016). "Jared Kushner's Second Act". Esquire. Archived from the original on 15 February 2020. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
  21. ^ Ward, Vicky (24 October 2016). "The Russian Expat Leading the Fight to Protect America". Esquire. Archived from the original on 3 March 2020. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
  22. ^ "The Devil's Casino". Vicky Ward. Archived from the original on 24 March 2019. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  23. ^ "Kushner, Inc". Vicky Ward. Archived from the original on 31 March 2019. Retrieved 8 April 2019.
  24. ^ Busch, Anita (9 June 2015). "J.C. Chandor On Dance Card For A24's 'The Liar's Ball'". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on 24 March 2019. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  25. ^ "Vicky Ward". IMDb. Archived from the original on 19 June 2024. Retrieved 12 February 2020.
  26. ^ Tracy, Marc (9 July 2019). "Ex-Vanity Fair Writer Says Editor Stopped Her From Exposing Epstein in '03". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 13 February 2020. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
  27. ^ Folkenflik, David (22 August 2019). "Why 'Vanity Fair' Story Left Out Abuse Allegations Against Epstein". NPR. Archived from the original on 30 November 2019. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
  28. ^ Pilkington, Ed (13 July 2019). "Jeffrey Epstein: how US media – with one star exception – whitewashed the story". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on 19 June 2024. Retrieved 17 February 2020.
  29. ^ "Jeffrey Epstein, a Billionaire Friend of Presidents Trump & Clinton, Arrested for Sex Trafficking". Democracy Now!. Archived from the original on 19 June 2024. Retrieved 17 February 2020.
  30. ^ Ward, Vicky (7 January 2015). "I Tried to Warn You About Sleazy Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein in 2003". The Daily Beast. Archived from the original on 19 June 2024. Retrieved 17 February 2020.
  31. ^ "Council on Foreign Relations". Council on Foreign Relations. Archived from the original on 19 April 2017. Retrieved 18 March 2021.
  32. ^ "Pipeline to Power by Vicky Ward - Audiobook - Audible.com". Archived from the original on 11 October 2023. Retrieved 21 September 2023.
  33. ^ "Visiting Fellows | Saïd Business School". www.sbs.ox.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 3 September 2023. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
  34. ^ https://abcnews.go.com/US/new-book-university-idaho-murders-sheds-light-bryan/story?id=123655547
  35. ^ "Vicky Ward and Matthew Doull's wedding". Tatler. 1 October 1995. Archived from the original on 22 June 2020. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
  36. ^ Ward, Vicky. "The Devil's Casino" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 June 2020. Retrieved 8 July 2019.
  37. ^ a b "An Englishman in New York". The Guardian. 14 August 2010. Archived from the original on 24 March 2019. Retrieved 14 February 2020.

Further reading

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