Laura Sydell is well known to public radio listeners around the country from her work as NPR's Digital Culture Correspondent. Sydell's work focuses on the ways in which technology is transforming our culture and how we live. Her award wining journalism has been heard regularly on NPR's major news magazines "All Things Considered" and "Morning Edition." She has also contributed to "Planet Money" and "This American Life" and NPR.org.  

     Before joining NPR, Sydell served as a senior technology reporter for American Public Media's Marketplace, where her reporting focused on the human impact of new technologies and the personalities behind the Silicon Valley boom and bust.

     Prior to moving to California, Sydell worked as a reporter for NPR Member Station WNYC in New York City. There she reported on race relations, city politics, and arts.  

     Her journalism has been honored with numerous honors including a Gerold Loeb Award, a Headliner Award, inclusion in Best Business Writing of 2012 from Columbia University, and by organizations such as The Newswomen's Club of New York, The New York Press Club, The Society of Professional Journalists, Investigative Reporters and Editors, American Women in Radio and Television, The National Federation of Community Broadcasters, and Women in Communications.

     After finishing a one-year fellowship with the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University, Sydell came to San Francisco as a teaching fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism at University of California, Berkeley.

     Sydell graduated Magna Cum Laude with a bachelor's degree from William Smith College in Geneva, New York, and earned a J.D. from Yeshiva University's Cardozo School of Law.

     Sydell loves to tell engaging stories that touch people's hearts and open their minds to new ideas, cultures and people. As a professional storyteller with a reputation for honesty, fairness and a unique perspective on the events that transform our world, Sydell strives to captivate, inform, and entertain.