Washington Post names Somashekhar to run health, food and climate biz news team

For the past year, Sandhya has been an assignment editor on Outlook, developing ideas for coverage, recruiting authors and editing stories on topics such as the pandemic and the war in Afghanistan. Among the pieces she commissioned were a number of memorable first-person pieces, including one by a California ex-convict who fought fires while in prison and another by a North Carolina dad who realized he wasn’t doing enough of his family’s mental labor. Before that, Sandhya spent three years as an editor on National’s political investigations team, where she edited high-impact stories about the Trump Organization, armed right-wing groups, the disparate impact of the pandemic, the role of reparations in one town, and the 2020 campaign.

Throughout her career at The Post, Sandhya has displayed a remarkable nose for news, bringing a rare combination of creative ambition, journalistic prowess and level-headed savvy to some of the most important stories of the day. After starting as an intern in Loudoun County in 2006, she was part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting. She moved to national politics in 2010, where she helped document the rise of the tea party, then on to the health and science team, where she covered the messy rollout of Obamacare. Just before her foray into editing, Sandhya was an inaugural member of the America desk focused on social change, including national fights over same-sex marriage, abortion rights and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. She also was a key player in The Post’s 2015 coverage of fatal police shootings, which won the Pulitzer Prize.

A graduate of the University of Maryland, Sandhya has a master’s in journalism from the University of California at Berkeley. She lives in the District with her husband, Post reporter Justin Jouvenal; their two children; and her parents.