Vivian is the Gulf bureau chief for The New York Times. Previously, she was a journalist for Bloomberg News in Saudi Arabia, where she has been based since 2015.

She's covered every major story during the rise of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, from the kingdom's midnight power struggles and futuristic mega-projects to the social changes sweeping the country and the simultaneous crackdown on dissent. She is most interested in the everyday lives of Saudis and immigrants to the country as they navigate the changes reshaping the kingdom. In 2026, she shared the George Polk Award for foreign reporting with her colleagues Abdi Latif Dahir and Justin Scheck for their investigative series about the abuse and exploitation of East African women in Saudi Arabia, including rare on-ground reporting on the plight of undocumented children born to domestic workers.

A proud product of the Chicago public school system, Vivian graduated from Yale College in 2009 and joined the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where she worked the “night cops” shift and later covered the local criminal and civil courts. Her work in Pittsburgh focused on topics including race, poverty and child welfare.

In 2011, Vivian relocated to the Arabian Peninsula, where she wrote for an English-language newspaper in the United Arab Emirates and studied Arabic in Oman before moving to Saudi Arabia. She is proficient in Modern Standard Arabic and colloquial Gulf Arabic.