Mary Jordan (journalist)


Mary Catherine Jordan is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, best-selling author and National Correspondent for the Washington Post.
For 14 years she was a foreign correspondent and she has written from nearly 40 countries. With her husband, Post journalist Kevin Sullivan, Jordan ran the newspaper's bureaus in Tokyo, Mexico City and London. Jordan also was the founding editor and head of content for Washington Post Live, which organizes political debates, conferences and news events for the media company.
Jordan and Sullivan are the authors of the Number #1 Bestselling book, Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland, that was released in April, 2015. Hope is written with Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus, two of the women who were kidnapped and held for a decade in Cleveland, Jordan's hometown.
Jordan also interviews some of the world's most accomplished people for the popular “What it Takes” podcast created by the nonprofit Academy of Achievement. Among those she has spoken with as part of this free podcast series, include singing legend Julie Andrews, artificial intelligence innovator Demis Hassabis, and Irish novelist John Banville.

Early life and career

Jordan, a daughter of Irish immigrants, was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. For her high school experience, she attended Saint Joseph Academy in Cleveland, Ohio. She graduated from Georgetown University in 1983 and earned a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1984. In 1989–90, Jordan was awarded a Nieman Fellowship by Harvard University.
For a year at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, she studied W. B. Yeats and other Irish poets. She was given her first job in the newspaper business by Irish author and editor Tim Pat Coogan, who hired her to write a column in The Irish Press. She enrolled in Japanese language classes at Georgetown University before moving to Tokyo for four years and studied Spanish on a post-graduate fellowship at Stanford University before moving to Mexico for five years.
In 2018, Jordan was a national correspondent for the Washington Post writing about politics and the Trump administration and appearing on ABC, BBC, and other TV networks. She covered the 2016 campaign, writing in-depth political stories and profiles. Jordan was also the founding editor and moderator for Washington Post Live, which hosted forums including "The 40th Anniversary of Watergate" in June 2012 that featured key Watergate figures including former White House counsel John Dean, Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, and reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. It was held at the Watergate hotel.
She has interviewed many newsmakers all over the world including singer and songwriter Paul McCartney, Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Benjamin Arellano Felix, one of Mexico's most notorious drug kingpins. She has written extensively about injustices and discrimination against women including the exceedingly low conviction rate of rape in Britain and the many girls in India denied schooling solely because they were not born male.

Career recognition and awards

Jordan and Sullivan won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for their Post series on the "horrific conditions in Mexico's criminal justice system and how they affect the daily lives of people," as the Pulitzer Board described. Along with four Post photographers, Jordan and Sullivan were also finalists for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for their series of stories on the difficulties women face around the world. The Pulitzer jury called the series a "sensitive examination of how females in the developing world are often oppressed from birth to death, a reporting project marked by indelible portraits of women and girls and enhanced by multimedia presentations."
Jordan and Sullivan authored The Prison Angel: Mother Antonia's Journey from Beverly Hills to a Life of Service in a Mexican Jail. In 2006, the book won the Christopher Award, which "salutes media that affirm the highest values of the human spirit."
Together with Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus, two of the women kidnapped and held for nearly a decade by Ariel Castro in Cleveland, Jordan and Sullivan wrote the bestselling book Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland, published by Viking in April 2015.
Jordan has also won numerous other awards including the George Polk Award, and accolades from the Overseas Press Club of America and the Society of Professional Journalists.
In 2016, Jordan was the winner of the Washington Post’s Eugene Meyer Award for her exceptional contributions to the paper.
Jordan was part of the team that reported Trump Revealed: An American Journey of Ambition, Ego, Money, and Power, a Washington Post biography of Donald Trump published by Scribner in 2016.
Jordan was a contributing writer to Nine Irish Lives: The Thinkers, Fighters and Artists Who Helped Build America, edited by Mark Bailey and published by Algonquin Books in 2018 among those honored at the Irish embassy in Washington.

Works

Appearances and interviews

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