Liza Diaz Lalova

Liza fell in love with the ocean as a child growing up on the Ecuadorian coast. Her passion for storytelling and photography began at the age of seven, when she began filming her friends as they recreated stories from her parents' library. Liza later combined her audiovisual passion with her love for nature by majoring in Environmental Communication and Digital Animation. She began making documentary films, animations, and photographs aimed at inspiring communities to care for their natural habitats. Liza became enchanted by the Galapagos, where she first came as a student and has continued on as a volunteer for various conservation, education and arts organizations. She is now a professional conservationist and artist dedicated to inspiring and educating in small communities around Ecuador using creative audiovisual communications.

While working with the Charles Darwin Foundation (CDF) and the Galapagos National Park, Liza contributed to a short film promoting greater international protection for the Scalloped Hammerhead Shark. She also documented several seasons of the Mangrove Finch Project. She travelled onboard the LEX-NATGEO to retrieve finch eggs for hatching and hand rearing at the CDF Station in Puerto Ayora. Working with Conservation International Ecuador, Liza created short films documenting the first major coastal cleanup of the Galapagos Marine Reserve. Liza hopes to transmit her experience and love for her country to visitors from around the globe, hoping to inspire their appreciation and support for wildlife and habitat conservation in Ecuador and all other magical places on Earth.