Lisa Garcia Quiroz, the founding publisher of People en Español, one of the most popular Hispanic magazines in the United States, died on Friday at her mother’s home in Denver. She was 57.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, her husband, Guy Garcia, said.

Ms. Quiroz’s career in media — first at Time Inc., where she also launched the magazine Time for Kids, and then at Time Warner, where she became the company’s first chief diversity officer — was driven by a deeply held conviction, she said.

“I feel a unique mission to give the Latino community a voice,” she told Harvard Magazine (she was a Harvard graduate), referring to her role at People en Español, a Time Inc. offshoot of People magazine. “I thought this was a great opportunity.”

Ms. Quiroz (pronounced KEE-rose) started People en Español in 1996, a time when coverage of Latino communities in the mainstream media was limited.

Earlier, a speaking engagement at her old elementary school on Staten Island inspired her to develop Time for Kids, an award-winning classroom newsmagazine that was launched in 1995.

“She had a way of finding missions and new projects that we could all get excited about and bring people together,” Jeffrey L. Bewkes, head of Time Warner, said in a telephone interview.

Later named to lead Time Warner’s diversity initiatives, Ms. Quiroz “gave diversity a business head,” said Dan Osheyack, a former Time Warner executive who worked with her for 30 years, “meaning that she helped transform the sensibility about it from the right thing to do to the smart thing to do.”

“She did that,” he added, “by pointing out the changes in audiences and the importance of developing storytellers who told stories across the spectrum of the population.”