Later that year she travelled to the North-South Sudan border and reported for CNN as fighting broke out and displaced thousands ahead of the country's official division later in 2011.

Ferguson's reporting focused on Al-Qaeda offshoots and franchises across the horn of Africa and Yemen, as well as conflict less covered by US TV outlets and newspapers.

[4] In late 2011 and throughout 2012 Ferguson reported exclusively from inside Yemen as the country's revolution toppled dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh and the Yemeni military split into two factions.

She was smuggled across the border from Lebanon into the Syrian city of Homs, where she filmed, produced, and reported alone from the restive Bar Amr neighborhood.

[5] As the Arab Spring protests and revolutions swept across the Middle East Ferguson reported for the network from Yemen, Jordan, Syria and Egypt.

Ferguson was in her room when the attackers executed diners in the restaurant downstairs, and was able to escape after Afghan security forces arrived and engaged in a gun battle with the Taliban fighters.

She covered the battle against ISIS in Iraq in 2016 and 2017, reporting from the front lines throughout the conflict, embedded with Iraqi Army troops, American forces, and Shia militia.

The next year, Ferguson was twice smuggled into rebel-held Yemen where her exclusive reports exposed famine conditions among the population as a result of the war.

Ferguson reported extensively for PBS and The New Yorker in the run up to the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan and during the group's eventual return to power in Kabul.