The Art Of Her Deal

About the author:

Mary Catherine Jordan is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, best-selling author and National Correspondent for the Washington Post.

For 14 years Jordan was a foreign correspondent, and has written from nearly 40 countries. With her husband, fellow Washington Post journalist Kevin Sullivan, Jordan ran the newspaper's bureaus in Tokyo, Mexico City and London. She 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 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.

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 (Class of 1979). 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.

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. https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/kevi...

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." https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/staf...

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 contribution.