Lauren Sommer is a radio reporter and web producer for QUEST – a multiplatform science and environmental series at KQED Public Broadcasting in San Francisco. At QUEST, she has hiked Sierra Nevada peaks, hunted for newts in the rain, and desperately tried to get her sea legs – all in the pursuit of good radio.

Sommer is a Bay Area native with a background in environmental policy and is a graduate of Cornell University. She has had brief previous lives cruising bunny slopes as a ski instructor in Tahoe, California, and eating croissants as a travel writer for Frommer's in France. Her work has appeared in National Geographic Adventure and Sierra Magazine, and on Marketplace.