Tzinnia Carranza Lopez studied Biology at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana Xochimilco and carried out an interdisciplinary M.Sc. program in Environment and Development at the Instituto Politecnico Nacional. First, she worked in Nicaragua developing productive projects with rural communities. Later, she worked at the Chimalapas forest, preparing land use planning maps at the community level. With this goal in mind, she designed a participatory methodology that incorporates the gender perspective and complements technical and farmer knowledge, linking both knowledge domains, which has been used to carry out similar studies. She has also elaborated didactic material and designed participative methodologies to both train professionals and technicians and to work with farmers.

At present she coordinates the project 'Conservation of Biodiversity and Sustainable Development in Three Priority regions' (a SEMARNAP-UNDP project funded by GEF). She is in charge of coordinating, supervising and monitoring the activities carried out at La Chinantla (Oaxaca), La Montaña (Guerrero) and Los Tuxtlas (Veracruz). In addition, she has been instrumental in the preparation of a proposal filed before GEF for an eight-year project in those regions.

Her particular interest to participate in LEAD is to be able to know and take advantage of experiences from other countries, to widen her view on environment issues, and to exchange knowledge, experiences, and points of view with professionals from other disciplines, sectors, and countries.