Levi Sumagaysay

Levi Sumagaysay covers the California economy for CalMatters with an eye on accountability and equity. She reports on the insurance market, taxes and anything that affects the state’s residents, labor force and economy.

Before joining CalMaters, Levi was a tech and business reporter and editor. She has written and edited stories about the rise of the dot-coms, the booms and busts of Silicon Valley and technology’s effects on everything, including the news media. She now works in a hybrid remote newsroom for an online publication, but previously worked in newsrooms with printing presses, paste-up artists, pica poles, pneumatic tubes and unforgettable personalities. She worked at a Seattle newspaper that had only one internet-connected computer.

The news business has changed, but what drew her to it hasn’t: She wants to tell stories to help people make informed decisions about their lives.

Levi was born in the Philippines and has lived in the Bay Area since the 1980s. She is a graduate of the San Francisco State journalism department. Her stories at MarketWatch on the tech economy and about janitors at Facebook won awards from the San Francisco Press Club; her tech news stories and commentary at the Mercury News won awards from Editor & Publisher and the Peninsula Press Club; she has received two National Press Foundation fellowships; and was a Dow Jones Newspaper Fund editing intern.

Other languages spoken: Tagalog (fluent)