May 2025
Liz Courtney is a documentary filmmaker, published author, climate advocate, and award winner of the 2024 Women Changing the World. For her work in mobilising youth for climate action through the Youth4Planet program, Liz was nominated as one of the 100 Women of Influence Australia and inducted into the Australian Businesswomen’s Hall of Fame.
The founder of Unboxed Media is committed to using storytelling to inspire change and accelerate action on climate.
Liz’s interest in climate change began when she produced Cool School Antarctica, a 2010 documentary that followed 40 teenagers on a United Nations expedition to Antarctica. The experience had a massive impact on Liz. From then she made it her mission to speak out on climate change.
In 2014 Liz produced a 6-part series called The Tipping Points. The documentary explored factors in the climate system that drive the oceans, weather, food and water security, biodiversity and so on. During filming, a trip to Greenland was an unforgettable experience for Liz. It was the first time she witnessed the rapid changes taking place in the far corners of the planet - namely, seeing the ice sheets and knowing they were melting at an unprecedented rate. Witnessing the shortened Inuit hunting season and consequential insufficient food for the native people really highlighted the fact that this is the sort of pain that’s rarely heard of or felt in mainstream news coverage, and needs to be captured in documentary filmmaking.
“That was really a very humbling experience for me to see and have that lived experience. I think I related to when journalists talk about being on the front line in a war zone or a major catastrophe, you actually see it in your head, and you feel it in your heart. For me, Greenland was a real wake up call,” she said.
Liz’s recent work Antarctica: The Giant Awakens explores the impact of melting glaciers on sea levels, illustrating the urgency of reducing global emissions.
However, she is optimistic about the future.
“When we look at the transition, Australia has all the ingredients to do it. So, I think there's tremendous opportunity in the energy sector. And if we can keep the stable streams of investment coming into Australia for the transition, we’ll do extremely well in the years to come,” said Liz.
As a climate storyteller, Liz is working on her next series which focuses on how the general public can accelerate change by making small changes in their daily lives.
“I don’t want the youth of the world to feel that it's all on their shoulders. But I also want to reiterate that we have to accelerate change. Because we don't have time. So, it’s not time just to talk, it’s time for action,” Liz says. “We are the first generation to feel the impacts of climate change, but we are also the last generation to be able to contain it, and we have to do that for our kids and grandkids."