Maria Paz Canales is a Chilean lawyer and hold a Master's Degree with specialization in Law and Technology from the University of California, Berkeley. Since 2017 Executive Director of Derechos Digitales (DD), a 15 years old independent non-profit organization based in Chile, working across Latin America on human rights in the digital environment, particularly freedom of expression, privacy, and access to knowledge and information. She was part of the group who founded the organization in 2005. On behalf of DD, she has been part for the last three years of the programing committee of LAC IGF preparatory meeting and Multistakeholder Advisory Group of global IGF. Previously, her work in private practice and academia covered telecommunications regulation, competition, data protection and intellectual property.