Journalist Maria Hinojosa to deliver
Defiance College commencement address

	Maria Hinojosa

Award-winning journalist and author Maria Hinojosa will be the speaker at Defiance College commencement ceremonies on Sunday, May 4. Two hundred and twenty-one graduates will be awarded bachelor’s, master’s and associate degrees during the 12 noon ceremony that will take place on the Colonnade Green in front of Pilgrim Library.

Preceding commencement will be a 10:30 a.m. baccalaureate service in Weaner Community Center during which Dr. Kenneth Christiansen, professor of religion and sociology at Defiance College, will give the meditation.

Christiansen, along with Professor Frank Sanders, will be retiring at the end of this academic year and will be recognized with professor emeritus status during commencement ceremonies.

Ranking scholars for the graduating class are Emily Meyer, Napoleon, and Miranda Moor, Hicksville.

Hinojosa is managing editor and host of National Public Radio’s “Latino USA.” In addition to hosting each week’s show, she is the senior correspondent for the Emmy Award-winning PBS newsmagazine “NOW.”

She was the urban affairs correspondent for CNN and spent six years as a New York-based correspondent for NPR. Hinojosa worked for WNYC-TV as host of “New York Hotline” and was a general assignment correspondent for the station. She was a producer and researcher for “CBS This Morning” as well as a producer for CBS Radio. Among the shows she produced for CBS Radio were “Where We Stand” with Walter Cronkite, “The Osgood File,” and “Newsbreak.”

Throughout her career, Hinojosa has garnered several awards and honors. Three times since 1995, Hispanic Business Magazine has named her one of the 100 most influential Latinos in the U.S. In 1999, Working Mothers Magazine named her one of the 25 Most Influential Working Mothers.

She received a National Association of Hispanic Journalists award in 2005 for her CNN documentary, “Immigrant Nation: Divided Country,” as well as Emmy recognition in 2002 for her coverage of the September 11 attacks. In 1995, she received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for “Manhood Behind Bars,” a story for NPR, which documented how jail has become a rite of passage for men of all races. In 1993, she received both the NAHJ Radio Award and the New York Society of Professional Journalists Deadline Award for her NPR report “Kids and Guns.” In 1991, she received a Unity Award and the Top Story of the Year Award from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists for her NPR story on gang members entitled “Crews.” Also in 1991, Hinojosa won an Associated Press award for her coverage of Nelson Mandela for WNYC Radio.

In addition, she has authored the book, Crews: Gang Members Talk with Maria Hinojosa (1995) which was based on her award-winning NPR report. Her second book, Raising Raul: Adventures Raising Myself and My Son, a motherhood memoir about raising a Latino child in a multicultural society, was published by Viking-Penguin in 2000. She was also a contributing essayist in the 2004 book, Borderline Personalities: A New Generation of Latinas Dish on Sex, Sass and Cultural Shifting, edited by Robyn Moreno and Michelle Herrera Mulligan. And most recently, she contributed an essay to the 2006 book, Why I Stay Married.

Born in Mexico City, Hinojosa is a magna cum laude graduate of Barnard College where she majored in Latin American studies, political economy and women’s studies. She resides in New York City with her husband and their son and daughter.

April 25, 2008