As another fall semester begins at the University of Central Florida, Watermark Out News’ Orlando office welcomes a few new faces thanks to our participation in UCF’s Journalism Intern Pursuit program.
We thought it would be a good idea to introduce our readers to these eager journalism students by having them write a profile on each other. Below, we get to know 2026 fall intern Ana Ferreira Lizama.
Ana Ferreira Lizama, a senior in UCF’s Journalism program minoring in Latin American studies, had a dream job of being an astronaut. Then, like most of us journalists, she started taking mathematics classes.
“Writing in a journalistic way, I probably started at UCF,” Lizama says. Lizama was sitting in a middle school history class in São Paulo, Brazil, when she learned about the dictatorships that took place in Latin America.
“I realized journalism had good journalism and bad journalism, and that kind of opened my eyes to the industry,” Lizama says. “To understand that you can change someone’s life for better, for worse, depending on how you write, was something that really affected me and led me to pursue journalism.”
Lizama immigrated to the U.S. from Brazil at 15, a few years before she began her journey at UCF.
“It took me a couple of years, from the end of middle school in Brazil to the process of college, to really think about, ‘Should I pursue this career or not?'” Lizama shares. “And then I was like, ‘Yeah, I should. I want to do that.’”
Lizama’s experiences in journalism include working at WUSF as a member of the digital team, writing daily stories and blogs from the platform’s daily radio shows, and working with Pulp City Magazine as a reporter. Lizama also worked on Centric, UCF’s student-made magazine.
“I wrote this article about the struggles of preserving language for 2nd- and 3rd-generation kids. It was an article that I was very proud of. I was able to understand it because it was something that happened to me. I was born in Brazil, but I’m half Chilean on my dad’s side, and I lost Spanish at one point,” Lizama says. “I submitted that story for an award, and I got 2nd place for the first time ever having submitted something for an award.”
Lizama’s dream job is to work with EL PAÍS, a large media outlet in Spain. “I would love to write about Latin America, especially the cultural part of Latin America,” Lizama says. “I think it’s such a rare region, and I would love to explore that.”
Lizama’s already begun writing about Latin America through her Substack. “I’m about to post my first article on Chaskis. They were the messengers; they were the official communication, a vehicle for the empire, the Inca Empire. They would run miles and miles each day just to deliver information,” Lizama says. “Hopefully I can get at least maybe five people paying for it [by the end of the year].”
As a senior in college, it can be easy to crack under stress- although another skill of Lizama’s is not falling into stress.
“There’s a way for everything to be fixed, and it’s not going to be the end of the world,” Lizama says. “So I just try not to stress myself or be anxious.”
And for Lizama, there’s no better way to relax than by watching her favorite movie/musical, “Mamma Mia.”
“When the Broadway set came to Orlando, and they went to Dr. Phillips, I bought my tickets,” Lizama shares. “I love ‘Mamma Mia’ so much. I love musicals in general, but ‘Mamma Mia’ is my favorite for sure.”
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