She worked on the international desk coordinating coverage for stories such as the capture of Saddam Hussein, the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and the deaths of Yasir Arafat and Pope John Paul II.

She produced coverage of the Israeli-Lebanese war, the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit and subsequent Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip, the trial of Saddam Hussein and the 2005 Iraqi constitutional referendum.

She covered the execution of Saddam Hussein, the Iraq War troop surge of 2007, the Beirut Arab University riots and the 2007 Bikfaya bombings.

She conducted interviews with notable figures such as Gen. David Petraeus, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih and Lebanese President Emile Lahoud.

With more than a decade as a war correspondent, on August 8, 2016, she spoke at a United Nations Security Council meeting on the situation in the civil war-torn Aleppo.

[14] In December 2020, in a joint investigation by The Insider and Bellingcat in co-operation with CNN and Der Spiegel, she reported how Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) members stalked Alexei Navalny for years, including just before his poisoning in August 2020.

In February 2022, CNN deployed Ward, initially, to the city of Kharkiv, in order to cover the beginning of the Russian Invasion in Ukraine.

[16] She was among the journalists who travelled to Ukraine to give insights into the humanitarian situation for children and wounded civilians in Ukrainian hospitals amidst the ongoing conflict.

Ward faced past controversies, including accusations of fabricating a live report and misquoting UN statistics in her coverage of Gaza.

[29] In November 2016, at London's Chelsea Old Town Hall, Ward married Philipp von Bernstorff, a German fund manager, whom she had met at a 2007 dinner party in Moscow.

[35] Ward speaks fluent English, French and Italian, conversational Russian, Arabic, and Spanish, and knows basic Mandarin Chinese.