Mariusa Reyes began her career in radio in 1989 as a producer for the BBC World Service.

She had known from a very early age that she wanted to become a radio journalist.

At home, in her native Venezuela, she spent hours listening to local radio broadcasts and reading out loud newspapers reports to her mother.

After a degree in journalism and working as a reporter for several Venezuelan newspapers, Mariusa traded tropical temperatures for the inclement English weather.

Her first huge challenge in radio came at her first year at the BBC, during the US invasion of Panama.

Cuban curiosity

In the mid-nineties Mariusa moved to the United States to take part in setting up a BBC Miami Bureau.

She acted as a roving reporter for The World, a radio programme for the US audience, co-produced by BBC World Service.

Having witnessed the complex world of the Cuban exile community in Miami, Mariusa felt increasingly curious about life in Communist Cuba.

She moved to Havana for two years, working as a freelance correspondent for several Spanish-speaking newspapers and radio programmes in the United States.

Mariusa then returned to Caracas to work for the BBC Latin American Service and witnessed the radical changes her country had begun to experience under President Hugo Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution.

She has now returned to England and last summer completed a Master's Degree on Global Media and Communication at the London School of Economics.

She continues to do work in Spanish for BBC World Service and is keen to make her voice a familiar one for British listeners