As a public heath reporter at The Los Angeles Times, Soumya reported extensively on anti-vaxxers (so much so that they protested outside her office), the impacts of the Affordable Care Act and, of course, the coronavirus pandemic. An interest in mental health reporting led her to investigate the state’s psychiatric hospitals and discover more than 100 people admitted to the facilities died preventable deaths while in their care. She created a first-of-its-kind comprehensive database of deaths and assaults at these hospitals to aid families looking for a safe place for their loved one.

As a member of the paper’s Metro staff, Soumya reported from inside L.A.’s produce trucks, shadowed a rattlesnake wrangler and chronicled downtown L.A.’s transformation into “DTLA.” She has traveled throughout the state to cover major disasters, including the 2016 Oakland Ghost Ship fire, the 2017 Wine Country fires and the 2018 mass shooting in her hometown of Thousand Oaks.

Her latest stories can be found here and her favorites below.

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