Maritza is an award-winning freelance journalist, producer, and writer in Arizona. She is the founder of Conecta Arizona, a Spanish-language news service that connects people in Arizona and Sonora primarily through WhatsApp and social media. She is the creator of Cruzando Líneas, a podcast of new border narratives. She is co-producer and co-host of Comadres al Aire.
In 2022, Maritza was named Innovator of the Year by the Local Media Association and received the 2022 Cecilia Vaisman Award for Best Hispanic Multimedia Journalist from Northwestern University and NAHJ.
She is a senior fellow in the JSK Community Impact Fellowship program at Stanford and a graduate of the Executive Program in News Innovation and Leadership in Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. She is also a fellow of The Carter Center, the Education Writers Association (EWA), Feet in 2 Worlds (Fi2w), IWMF’s “Adelante” and Listening Post Collective; she is part of Take The Lead’s 50 Women Who Can Change the World of Journalism 2020. Felix has twice been named “Arizona’s Best Spanish Language Journalist” and one of the “40 Hispanic Personalities Under 40 in Arizona.”