Nancy Ames

Founder/Co-Owner & Creative Director

“Nancy, a multi-lingual, former singer, dancer, and television personality, parlayed her performance career, creativity, and writing prowess into the entrepreneurship of one of the country’s most professional and comprehensive special events companies.”

The daughter of old Washington and Diplomatic Society in the Nation’s Capitol, Nancy graduated from The Holton-Arms School before going to Bennett College in Millbrook, NY. She finished her academics as one of 12 chosen American girls to live and study for 2 years in Europe. Her performing career included the Broadway stage, television, recordings, mega-showrooms, supper clubs, and concerts. Her television years began on NBC’s “That Was the Week That Was” where she was the show’s singing and acting signature “TW3 Girl”. For the next 12 years, she was a guest headliner on Ed Sullivan, Hollywood Palace, The Tonight Show, and the gamut of star-hosted Variety Shows such as The Andy Williams Show, Johnny Cash Show, Kraft Music Hall, Dean Martin Show, Bob Hope Show, Jerry Lewis Show, Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Red Skelton, The Bell Telephone Hour, Laugh In and too many others to mention, until the late 70’s. When she moved to Houston, she hosted her own “Nancy Ames Show”, a daily variety/talk show on the NBC affiliate for five years.

It was then that she saw the need in America’s 4th largest city for a firm that could plan, manage, produce and direct turnkey events like those companies she interfaced with on her IBM and Kodak concert tours. Nancy is the creative force responsible for the direction in which Ward & Ames Special Events has evolved. Her forte is in the “big picture”—the overall architecture, theme and design of the event at hand. Her college background in those fields has served her well in envisioning how to transform empty spaces into decorative environs and client messages into the most relatable formats.

Her remodeling firm, Estate Restorations, was considered one of the most innovative in Houston before she closed it to focus on the increasing demands at Ward & Ames. She is also a renowned gastronome winning Food & Wine Magazine’s top culinary award, Co-Founder of The Plumeria Society of America, and a gardener specializing in orchids and other exotics. She invented “The Carpet Garden” to control weed invasion in the vegetable garden before ceding that hobby to her husband and partner Danny Ward. In 2002, she started her wine-related jewelry company, A Nancy Ames Collection, for wine enthusiasts and connoisseurs and was inducted into La Confrèrie des Chevaliers du Tastevin in 2008.

Nancy served on numerous national, regional, and local Boards from 1975 to 2015 and is currently on several Advisory Boards. She donates her time and resources to thirteen charitable organizations plus their daughter Nancy’s 501c3 Cancer non-profit, Wig Out.

Her multifaceted life is blessed with God’s grace, seized opportunities, acute sensitivity, uncanny insight, a great sense of humor, and countless honors and awards of merit, including a National Gold Circle Emmy.