Liberty Zabala is an Emmy Award-winning reporter, weather anchor & fill-in news anchor for NBC 7 San Diego.
Previously, Liberty worked as one of four reporter trainees selected from across the country for the NBC Reporter Development Program. Under the program, she went through intensive multimedia training workshops alongside NBCUniversal's top media executives, talent and coaches at NBC 5 Dallas, NBC 10 Philadelphia, and NBC 4 New York under the direction of The Poynter Institute's Al Tompkins. She would also write, shoot, edit and report enterprise stories for three live newscasts a day on NBC7.
Prior to that, she worked as a multimedia journalist for KCOY/KKFX, the CBS/FOX affiliate covering California's Central Coast.
Some of her most memorable stories include leading breaking news coverage of the Central American immigration crisis, covering the May firestorm that burned across San Diego County, covering the San Bernardino terrorist attacks and most recently, the Las Vegas mass shooting. She has also filed reports overseas from Belize and Israel.
Liberty is a graduate of California State University, Northridge with a degree in journalism and a collateral in political science with an emphasis in international relations.
She is a dedicated member of Asian American Journalists Association where she served as a board director for the Los Angeles chapter and currently serves the San Diego chapter as president.
Liberty was awarded the Vada and Colonel Barney Oldfield National Security Reporting Fellowship by the Radio Television Digital News Foundation for her work covering Marines, sailors, active duty service members and veterans in the nation's largest military town, San Diego.
Local
She was born and raised in Los Angeles. She is the daughter of former LA Herald Examiner reporter and foreign diplomat, Laurencio V. Zabala Jr. When she is not working, Liberty enjoys training in Krav Maga and working in humanitarian aid abroad.
