Vicky Ward

Vicky Ward
Born	Victoria Penelope Jane Ward
Occupation	Primarily an author, investigative journalist, columnist, newspaper and magazine editor, and television commentator.

Victoria Penelope Jane ("Vicky") Ward is a British-born author, investigative journalist, columnist, and television commentator. She is a former magazine deputy editor and newspaper editor. She has lived in New York City since 1997.

Early life

Her portrait, taken by photographer Jason Bell, is hung in the British National Portrait Gallery as part of Brell's series "An Englishman in New York."

Journalism career

Ward began her journalism career in the chairman’s office of British Condé Nast, where she became the sub-editor of “The Insider,” the gossip column in the now-defunct British newspaper, Today, followed by a position at the Daily Telegraph, writing features and penning the weekly "Financial Diary". At 23, while continuing to write features, Ward became the editor of The Independent's daily gossip column. Despite the Independent’s refusal to publish Ward’s story on the suicide of British aristocrat Lady Caithness, citing an assumed lack of public interest, she submitted the article to the judges of the Catherine Pakenham award, Britain’s annual award for women journalists under 25, and received the runner-up prize.

Before moving to the United States in 1997, Ward wrote for a number of British publications, including the Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Times magazine and the Daily Mail, for which she became the features correspondent in the US, where she was assigned stories in the Arctic, Hollywood, and in several US States.

In 1998, Ward began an 18 month-long managerial position as the news features editor at the New York Post, before becoming the executive editor of Tina Brown's Talk magazine, departing shortly before it was folded by Miramax in 2001. Since then, she has held the position of contributing editor at Vanity Fair, and blogs for VanityFair.com and the Huffington Post. Her website, vickyward.com, indexes her current work. From 2007 until 11 May 2009, she wrote a weekly column on the opinion pages of the London Evening Standard.

Recent work

At Vanity Fair, Ward specializes in investigative reporting. She has profiled Hewlett-Packard chief Carly Fiorina, counter-terrorist expert Richard Clarke, Vivendi former chief Jean-Marie Messier, disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, and she exposed CIA agent Valerie Plame, in a 2004 article. Her 2005 profile of Morgan Stanley CEO Philip Purcell was considered by some to be a factor in his eventual ousting from the company.^{[citation needed]}

Ward has also written about the worlds of art and society: she has chronicled disputes at the Getty Museum, and at New York's Guggenheim; she profiled art collector and luxury magnate Francois Pinault as well as art publisher Louise MacBain; she has also profiled society figures Leila Hadley Luce and the late Brooke Astor.^{[citation needed]}

On CNBC, she has appeared on various programs to discuss topics including the glass ceiling, the battle for the Tribune Newspaper Group, and war profiteering, in an interview with “War, Inc.” actor John Cusack.^{[citation needed]}

She has also discussed the "booming call-girl industry", having profiled Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the “D. C. Madam” (with whom she was in close communication up until Palfrey’s recent suicide), as well as making various appearances discussing former Governor of New York Eliot Spitzer in the days following his prostitution scandal.

Her first non-fiction book, The Devil’s Casino: Friendship, Betrayal, and the High Stakes Games Played Inside Lehman Brothers, released by John F. Wiley & Sons, Inc in April 2010, became a New York Times bestseller, and was shortlisted for the Spear's Financial Book of the Year Award. Writing for the Washington Post, Stanley Bing wrote, "Ward carefully and skillfully tracks the last 25 or so years of the great, doomed enterprise, and her portrait of a business entity is often engaging, spicy and amusing. I particularly enjoyed the horror stories about those few, strategically challenged souls who had the temerity not to learn golf." The Financial Times also praised the book, saying, "Ward hones [sic] in on Lehman's central problems better than even she could have known. [The Devil's Casino is] the closest thing to a bodice-ripper that the 2008 meltdown is likely to produce," though James Pressley, writing for the AP, took issue with the book's use of anonymous sources. In recognition for her journalistic work, Ward received Women: Inspiration and Enterprise's first media award in September 2010.

In May 2010, she became a regular contributor to Bloomberg TV.^{[citation needed]}

External links

• VickyWard.com
• The Devil's Casino: Friendship, Betrayal, and the High Stakes Games Played Inside Lehman Brothers at John F. Wiley & Sons
• CSNBC, “Suicide of the DC Madam”
• Vicky Ward on Facebook
• The Devil's Casino at VickyWard.com
• Vanity Fair, "John Cusack's Viral Success Story"
• Vicky Ward at The Huffington Post
• MSNBC, "Andres Piedrahita and his yacht"