Yardley is a graduate of Walter Hines Page High School in Greensboro, North Carolina and received a B.A.
After 13 years as a foreign correspondent, Yardley and his family moved to London where he now works as the Europe editor.
Yardley has also worked for the Anniston Star and New York Times Company regional newspapers in Fairfax County, Virginia.
In 2006, Yardley and his colleague, Times Beijing bureau chief Joseph Kahn, won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, for a series of eight articles on the "ragged justice in China as the booming nation's legal system evolves", including their coverage of the detention of American-Chinese entrepreneur David Ji.
[2] In 2014, Yardley won the George Polk Award for foreign reporting and the Gerald Loeb Award for Breaking News for a series of articles on unsafe work conditions in the garment industry in Bangladesh and the collapse of a factory building that killed more than 1,100 workers.