Andrew Ward grew up in Yemen, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India, and Virginia. He attended Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Virginia where he earned his B.A. in Religion in 2001. He then taught the History of English Literature at Polonia University in Częstochowa, Poland for three years while earning his M.Ed from Framingham State College’s European campus and moonlighting as a lounge singer. He moved to New Orleans in 2004, graduated with his M.S. in International Development in 2006, and his Ph.D. in International Economic Development from Tulane in 2016.

Along the way, Ward worked as a tour guide of the French Quarter and volunteered to help establish and direct several nonprofit organizations in the New Orleans area including Voices for International Business and Education, which operates the International High School of New Orleans. He is the founder and director of the Wahida Unity Project (which uses music and the arts to bridge the divide between the US and the Islamic World), as well as the HIV Awareness "iKnow" Concert Series.

Ward has been honored as one of the Times Picayune's Young Urban Rebuilding Professionals, one of Gambit Weekly’s “40 Under 40” in 2011, and Mary Washington’s Outstanding Young Alumni in 2014. He was a 2016 Fellow at Loyola's Institute of Politics and a 2017 Fellow with the New Leaders Council. He is the author of numerous academic articles, stage plays, and A Bourbon Street Sojourn - an adults only children's book about a 6 foot Creole cockroach guiding a lost 8 year old boy through the French Quarter. Currently he works as the Prevention and Education Program Manager at Odyssey House Louisiana, the largest substance abuse treatment center in the state. He is an active Rotarian who lives in Gentilly with his pet costume designer fiancé, a cat and two dogs.