Peter Shann Ford

He was educated at the Anglican Grammar School, Brisbane, was a Rotary Exchange Student to the USA, dropped out of Medicine, graduated with a commission from the Officer Training Unit, Scheyville and completed National Service with 3RAR infantry battalion.

Ford began work in the media as a newspaper and radio journalist in Queensland, before joining the Seven Television Network in Sydney as a reporter and news reader.[1]

In 1981, he moved to the USA and joined CNN in Atlanta as a news anchor and reporter and was a founding anchor at CNN's Headline News. In 1984 he became the 6pm and 11pm news anchor at the NBC affiliate in Miami, FL, and in 1988 he joined NBC's WRC-TV in Washington DC as a news anchor.[1]

In 1982, while at CNN, he became a computer programmer/analyst on a team developing microcomputers for rehabilitation and communications for people with disabilities at the VAMC Rehabilitation R&D Laboratory in Atlanta. Working with Principal Investigator Gary Wynn Kelly, he wrote JoyWriter, an Apple-based program that enabled people with neuromuscular disease and spinal injuries to replace a computer keyboard with a joystick controller.[3]

In Australia, at the Seven Network he was an anchor for Seven News.[1] and was the first co-anchor of the national television morning show, Sunrise" with Chris Bath. In the United States, he covered the NASA Space Shuttle program for more than a decade, reported on assignment from The White House, The Pentagon, Moscow, The Vatican, Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in the Persian Gulf, and after 9/11 from Pakistan, the Northwest Frontier and Tora Bora in Afghanistan.

In 2000 Simon & Schuster, New York, published his first novel, "The Keeper of Dreams",[4] set in Australia and the USA.

In July 2019, "The Australian" national newspaper published his tribute to Astronaut Neil Armstrong [5] whom he met after publishing a voice analysis of his first words stepping onto the moon.

In 2018 he represented Control Bionics to win the first "Pitch@Palace Commonwealth" award in London, in a field of 42 nations.

Ford is a winner of the National Disability Award 2015 for Excellence in Accessible Technology for NeuroSwitch[6]

He is a Lifetime Member of Mensa.

He is a former "New South Wales Senior Australian of the Year" [7]

• ABC "Australian Story"
• "Conversations with Richard Fidler"
• "CommBank Interview"
• "The Australian"
• "The Project"
• "Seven Network Television"