Jenny Gold, Kate Sequeira join The Times to anchor its early childhood education initiative

The following announcement was sent on behalf of Deputy Metro Editor Stephanie Chavez and Assistant Managing Editor for Audience Samantha Melbourneweaver:

We are pleased to announce that Jenny Gold and Kate Sequeira have joined the Los Angeles Times to anchor our new early childhood education initiative, which will explore the critical issues affecting California’s youngest residents, their parents, care providers and educators.

Gold, who will be a member of Metro’s education team, has spent nearly 14 years covering healthcare as a senior correspondent at Kaiser Health News.

During her time at KHN, Gold investigated rising hospital costs, healthcare fraud and violations of patient mental health protections. The Times has published many of her stories, including a piece about allegations of patient harm and fraud at a chain of pain clinics serving tens of thousands of Californians. Another investigation, published in the Guardian, revealed that some hospitals had neglected to inform workers when they were exposed to COVID. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration later issued an emergency rule to make such disclosures mandatory, citing KHN reporting.

Gold won the Society of American Business Editors and Writers’ 2021 Best in Business Award in audio for a documentary on the public radio program “Reveal,” about a first-year medical resident training at a hospital in Fresno during the pandemic. Her coverage of COVID-19 also won a 2020 award from the California News Publishers Assn. In 2018, Gold’s stories on sickle cell disease won a Salute to Excellence from the National Assn. of Black Journalists.

Her stories have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, on NPR and the “Marketplace” radio program, among others. A Berkeley native, Gold is a graduate of Brown University and was previously a Kroc fellow at NPR.

Sequeira is the audience engagement journalist for the education initiative. She previously covered the Los Angeles Unified School District and breaking news for EdSource, where she reported on K-12 enrollment declines, staffing shortages and the pandemic’s impact on learning.

Earlier at Inewsource, she conceived engagement strategies for large investigations, including two in partnership with NPR and USA Today. Sequeira won first place for environment reporting from the San Diego chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists in 2022 for her work on a story she co-wrote about heat deaths in Imperial County.

Sequeira’s new role marks her return to The Times, where she handled design, distribution and outreach for the annual Reading by 9 guide and was instrumental in taking the project online in 2018. She also helped run the High School Insider internship in the summers, first as a Times Public Affairs intern and later as a production specialist with the team. Sequeira grew up in San Diego and graduated from USC.

The Los Angeles Times’ early childhood education initiative includes expanded coverage of children from birth to age 5 as well as the creation of learning resource guides designed to help support parents and caregivers. It is being funded by six California philanthropies in collaboration with the L.A. Partnership for Early Childhood Investment. As with any newsroom partnership or initiative, The Times’ newsroom retains complete editorial control.

As a companion to the editorial initiative, The Times’ Public Affairs group will produce and distribute a series of four early education guides. Building on The Times’ annual Reading by 9 parent reading guide, these guides will include research-based approaches to cultivating literacy, quality book recommendations, and advice from parents and experts to help encourage a lifelong love of reading among children ages 0 to 5 years.

Funding comes through the support of the Los Angeles Partnership for Early Childhood Investment, a consortium of foundations and donors whose mission includes improving the lives, health and education of children and families, particularly those from low-income and traditionally underserved communities. L.A. Partnership members providing funding for this initiative include: Ballmer Group, Sobrato Philanthropies, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Heising-Simons Foundation and Stein Early Childhood Development Fund (at the California Community Foundation).