The conversation starter

Back when she was a student at Barnard College , Maria Hinojosa anchored a radio show called "Nueva Cancion y Demas" ("New Music and More") that played political Latin music. She enjoyed introducing political music and presenting different personalities from New York's Spanish-speaking community.

"We gave them a voice," says Hinojosa, who is now a senior correspondent for PBS. She recalls thinking: "Maybe what I am doing is really important. Maybe what I am doing is giving these people who are voiceless a voice."

In giving Latinos a voice, Hinojosa discovered her own. Today she's an investigative reporter for the PBS news magazine "NOW" and the host of National Public Radio's "Latino USA," and beginning tonight she will have her own TV talk show, "Maria Hinojosa: One-on-One." The show, which premieres at 7:30 p.m. on WGBH, will feature Latino newsmakers. Hinojosa says she hopes her interviews will show viewers there is a lot more to Latinos than what they see in stories about immigration.

"This is our way of saying, 'This is somebody you should know,' " says Hinojosa, 45, who lives in New York's West Harlem with her husband, painter German Perez , and two young children. She gets to do some of her work from home, hosting her NPR show from a bedroom closet that she converted into a studio.

For her new TV show, she had to come to Boston, where she taped 13 episodes at the WGBH studios. "One-on-One" is produced by La Plaza , the Latino production unit of WGBH. The station also taped 10 episodes in Spanish for V-me , a new network that broadcasts public programming in Spanish in cities with major Spanish-speaking populations. Though it starts here tonight, the English-language show makes its national debut on PBS in August.

"It's allowing our audience, which is clearly not just Latinos, to get to know Latinos who are thinking and creative and engaged, real policy makers in this moment of the US," she says over the phone from her new PBS office in New York.

The shows -- three of which were made available to the Globe -- are built around engaging, intimate conversations with Latinos who are having an impact culturally or politically in the United States and abroad , but who may not necessarily be familiar to ordinary Americans. Among the 13 interviews: "Desperate Housewives" star Ricardo Chavira ; American Civil Liberties Union director Anthony Romero ; Nicaraguan-born writer and former guerilla fighter Gioconda Belli ; and Teresa Rodriguez , a Univision anchor and co-author of the new book "Daughters of Juarez."

"These are people who we know are important, but they are not household names," Hinojosa says. "These are not the Salma Hayeks and J. Lo s of the world, but they are having quite an impact. They are influencing our country, our culture, our laws, environmental policy."

The interviews fill a void on national television, says the show's executive producer, Joseph Tovares . "There are not a lot of places where audiences can go and listen to intelligent conversation and intelligent television dealing with Latinos," he says. "There are not too many places where you can get half an hour with Willie Colon , talking about the early days of salsa."

But the show isn't the first of its kind for WGBH. From 2001 through last year, La Plaza had produced a similar show called "Conversations With Ilan Stavans." Producers decided to go in another direction, according to a WGBH spokeswoman, and Stavans, who has been openly critical of WGBH, said he too wanted to move on.

"It was a terrific five years. I loved doing the show," says Stavans, a professor of Latin American and Latino culture at Amherst College whose final guest on the show was Hinojosa. "As time went by, I became worried of the way PBS and WGBH were ghettoizing Latino issues. . . . I hope that Maria's show is successful, and I hope that people are starving for more in-depth [interviews], something that goes beyond what has been done and opens up our community at the higher level."

"I never saw a Latina journalist growing up in the South Side of Chicago," says Hinojosa, who was born in Mexco and lived in Brookline when she was a baby before her parents moved to Chicago. "The first Latino journalist I saw was Geraldo Rivera. I never thought this was a field I could work in. When you grow up as an immigrant in this country, you don't think you have a voice."

With dreams of acting and dancing, she headed to New York to attend Barnard . There, she learned about the college radio show . Hinojosa says she realized then, "I could own my voice. I could be a member of the media." She honed her journalistic skills with the show and graduated with a major in Latin American studies. She was a producer and researcher for "CBS This Morning" and in 1990 a correspondent for WNYC Radio . Along the way, she peppered her career with big achievements: She was the first Latina correspondent for NPR and CNN, covering stories about immigration and urban violence. She also became an author, publishing "Crews: Gang Members Talk to Maria Hinojosa," about her stories for NPR. Her experience as a Latina career mother inspired her to write a memoir, "Raising Raul: Adventures Raising Myself and My Son," about raising a Latino child in a multicultural society.

Her roles as author and journalist reflect her calling as a communicator. "I am opening a door to let you see that even though you may look and sound entirely different than the person I am interviewing, that hopefully you will be able to see that person that is like you," she says. "I allow people to find what is common in each other."

When she sits with Romero , she gets him to talk about being the first Latino and first openly gay head of the ACLU, and about how his father, a banquet waiter, was denied a promotion because he didn't speak English. When Hin o josa interviews actor Chavira he talks about his struggles in high school after his mother died of breast cancer and how he has tried to persuade other Latino men to encourage the women in their lives to get tested.

While Hinojosa believes she's helping viewers cross cultural borders, she also says she still feels she's crossing personal and professional ones with each interview.

"I am continuing in the same path of finding these sometimes- unsung heroes or invisible people doing important work," she says. "It seems a role I've been given in my life."

Johnny Diaz can be reached at jodiaz@globe.com.