Getahn Ward is a business writer with The Tennessean. He writes about commercial real estate and the business of health care and previously covered financial services, publicly traded companies and other business news beats.
Before joining The Tennessean in 1998, he was a business reporter with the former Nashville Banner from 1996 to 1998. Ward also works as an adjunct professor at Tennessee State University (TSU). He teaches a Fundamentals of Media Writing course in the Department of Mass Communications and previously taught classes in multicultural marketing and social entrepreneurship in the Department of Africana Studies.
Ward has an undergraduate degree in economics and finance and a master’s degree in business administration, both from TSU. As a student at TSU, he was editor of its campus newspaper The Meter and held several summer internships. They included reporting for the business section at the Commercial Appeal in Memphis, working as a copy editor at The Tennessean and as a research reporter at the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University.
Ward is a native of Liberia, West Africa, who migrated to the United States in 1991. In Liberia, he began his journalism career at the age of 15 with an internship at The Standard newspaper and later founded The Liberian Student Tribune, a publication that targeted high school students. Ward was editor of the Spartan Voice, his high school paper.
Outside of work, he is parliamentarian of the Nashville Association of Black Journalists after serving as vice president for more than a decade, secretary of the Association of Liberians in Tennessee, and head of the newsletter team of the B.W. Harris Episcopal High School Alumni Association U.S.A. Ward enjoys listening to music, watching sports and dramatic plays, and participating in church-related activities.
His career aspirations include newspaper management, teaching college full-time and someday returning to Liberia to pursue business and philanthropic interests.
Ward is married to Ebele Ward.