She is one of the Magnum Foundation's Human Rights Fellows and is the recipient of a resolution passed by the Philippines House of Representatives in her honor, HR No.

[3] She is the recipient of grants from Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting 2016,[4] WMA Commission 2017,[5] and part of Open Society Foundations Moving Walls 24.

She studied for a bachelor's degree in nursing at Saint Mary's University in Bayombong before dropping out and leaving the Philippines to raise funds for the education of her siblings.

Bacani started taking casual photographs after purchasing her first digital single-lens reflex camera with a loan from her employer.

[11][12] In 2015, Xyza won the prestigious Magnum Foundation Human Rights scholarship to New York University, which will pay for her to enroll in the Tisch School for the Arts six-week photography course.