Maria Hinojosa: 2010 keynote speaker
Maria Hinojosa is the President of the Futuro Media Group. In addition, she is the Senior Correspondent for the acclaimed series NOW on PBS, the anchor and managing editor of NPR’s Latino USA, and the anchor of her own Emmy Award winning talk show One on One with Maria Hinojosa from WGBH/La Plaza. Hinojosa has won top honors in American journalism including 2 Emmy’s, the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Reporting on the Disadvantaged, and the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Over- seas Press Club for best documentary for her groundbreaking piece Child Brides: Stolen Lives.
Prior to joining NOW in 2005, Hinojosa spent 8 years as the Urban Affairs Correspondent for CNN. Before joining CNN, Hinojosa was a news correspondent for National Public Radio in New York. Three times over the past decade, Hinojosa has been named one of the 100 Most Influential Latinos in the United States by Hispanic Business magazine. She has received the Ruben Salazar for Communications from the National Council of la Raza and was inducted into the “She Made It” Hall of Fame at the Paley Center/ Museum of Television and Radio in a program that honors women trail blazers in the media.
An author of two books including a motherhood memoir, Hinojosa was named one of the “25 Most Influential Working Mothers in America” by Working Mother magazine. In 2008, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists gave Hinojosa their most prestigious distinction, The Leadership Award, and also named the NOW program, “Child Brides: Stolen Lives” Best TV Documentary. Hinojosa also won a 2008 Emmy Award for her piece on “Taxing the Poor” which documented the plight of the poor in Alabama. In 2009, Hinojosa was honored with a Gracie Award for Individual Achievement as Best TV Correspondent from American Women in Radio and Television. Hinojosa and the NOW team also won the Cronkite Award for Best Political Reporting given by the USC Annenberg School for Communication.
Hinojosa was given a Lifetime Achievement Award in Media by the Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors and received the Crossing Borders Award from the Feminist Press and was honored with the North Star News Prize in recognition of her continuing in the tradition of Frederick Douglass. She has received the Imagen Award, the Latino Leaders Eagle Leadership Award and the Catalyst Award by the National Association of Minority Media Executives
Hinojosa also worked at CBS News as a radio producer for Walter Cronkite and Charles Osgood. At WNBC- TV in New York she hosted Visiones, a public-affairs talk show. Hinojosa is also an established author. Her personal experiences as a Mexican-American career woman, wife and mother were published in 1999 in her critically acclaimed memoir, Raising Raul: Adventures Raising Myself and My Son . In 1995 she published Crews: Gang Members Talk with Maria Hinojosa, a book based on her award-winning NPR report that showed how jail has become a rite of passage for young men of all races. She has contributed essays to several books including Why I Stay Married and Borderline Personalities.
Hinojosa was born in Mexico City, raised in Chicago, and is married to the artist German Perez and along with her son and daughter lives in Harlem, New York City.