Sona Patel

Sona Patel is currently a Sr. Audience editor for The New York Times, based in Los Angeles. Prior to moving to L.A., she was based in The Times’s New York City headquarters for nearly 5 years, where she served as a deputy of the social media team. Her current role on The Times’s Audience team is at the intersection of editorial and analytics, and one of her primary goals is to grow The Times’s California audience.

Prior to joining The Times, she worked for The Seattle Times as a social media producer where she was part of the team that won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting. She started her journalism career as a general assignment reporter for The (San Luis Obispo) Tribune.

Sona graduated from UC Irvine with a B.A. in Literary Journalism and Spanish and a minor in Information and Computer Science. She returned to her alma mater in 2018 to be the commencement speaker for the School of Humanities (go Anteaters!)