Oprah Winfrey has risen to a dominant position in American television and offers a powerful voice for women. Read her story and consider the challenge that follows.
Female Leaders: Oprah Winfrey
Oprah was in fact born Orpah, a name from the biblical book of Ruth, but her relatives usually transposed the 
and the
so that she was soon known as Oprah and the name stuck. Her parents were unmarried teenagers: her mother was a housemaid called Vernita Lee and her father, who was in the military at the time of her conception, was called Vernon Winfrey. She was born on 29 January 1954 in the American state of Mississippi.
In her early years Oprah was brought up by her grandmother (Hattie Mae Lee) on a poor rural property. Described as a bright child, she soon learnt to read under instruction from her grandmother and from the age of 3 she was reciting the Bible in church. She moved to Milwaukee with her mother at the age of 6 and was soon being subjected to sexual and physical abuse. She claims to have been raped at the age of 9 and became pregnant at the age of 14; her child died in infancy. Unhappy and discontent, Oprah ran away from home and ended up in a juvenile detention centre.
When she was released she went to live with her father in Nashville. Vernon, who was now a barber, insisted that his daughter be educated and imposed a strict set of rules that ensured she was well educated. Every week Oprah was required to read a book and write a report about it. In the seventh grade a teacher noticed her reading during the lunch break and recommended her for a scholarship to a better school. Regarded as extremely pretty, Oprah won a number of beauty competitions, prominent among them the title of Miss Black Tennessee, and at the age of 17 she secured a job reading the news on a local radio station. As well as her academic diligence, her talent for performing showed early and after leaving school she attended Tennessee State University to undertake a bachelor’s degree in speech and performing arts, graduating in 1976. During her studies she gained a job with a Nashville television company and became their first black female news anchor.
After completing her degree, Oprah worked as a co‐anchor on an early evening news show in Baltimore. Producers noticed that she occasionally became emotionally embroiled in the news she was reading and she was made co‐host of a local television talk show. It was in this format that she shone and she was soon perfecting her talk show skills.
In 1983 she was hired to host a low‐rated, half‐hour morning talk show in Chicago called AM Chicago. Again she made the format her own and the show soon became a major success. It was expanded to an hour in length and renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show. It began as a traditional talk show, but gradually expanded into a format for the discussion and presentation of current issues and featured major stars, eventually ranking as the highest‐rated talk show in history, running from 1986 to 2011. In 1986 the show began being broadcast nationally and Oprah’s fame as a daytime television presenter of controversial topics was cemented. Much of the content focused on topics with specific relevance to women. Oprah also shared many of her personal issues, allowing women to identify with her struggles (particularly with weight loss). Her fan base grew and her ability to retain a ‘common’ or popular image kept her in the public eye. The show was soon transmitted internationally and won three Emmy awards.
Oprah also undertook a number of acting parts and in 1985 appeared in Steven Spielberg’s film of Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple. Inexperienced at acting and intimidated by Spielberg, Oprah was slow to deal with her role, but as her confidence grew the part was expanded and her talents again shone. She was awarded other acting roles and appeared in the television mini‐series The Women of Brewster Place in 1989. In 2013 she took a role in the film The Butler.
The power of Oprah’s influence can be evidenced by the effect of her weekly book club, introduced into her talk show in the late 1990s. Any book reviewed or discussed on the book club shot to the top of the US bestseller list. She could have a negative impact too. After doing a show on mad cow disease she made an off‐the‐cuff comment that she would never eat beef again. This led to a national slump in beef prices and she was sued for business disparagement by a group of Texan cattle farmers. She was found not guilty.
Oprah is considered to be the richest African American of the 20th century and is currently North America’s only black billionaire, with an estimated worth of $2.8 billion in 2012. Her wealth, media profile and personal support for Barack Obama are said to have delivered millions of votes to his two presidential election successes and in 2013 he awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
In the early 1980s Oprah started working on a number of charity projects and this work continues. She began The Angel Network as a coordinating body for her numerous charity activities, with funds raised being used to support school scholarships and to build youth centres and homes or shelters for homeless women. She also manages the Oprah Winfrey Foundation, which offers grants to support education for women, children and families around the globe. In 2007 in South Africa she established the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in partnership with the Ministry of Education as a tool for helping young girls in the country get a better education and thrive.
Oprah’s media empire grew throughout the 1990s and 2000s with the establishment of O – The Oprah Magazine and O at Home, as well as a women’s cable television network and her own production company, Harpo Productions (Oprah spelt backwards).
Oprah Winfrey is recognised internationally as a media personality and as a philanthropist and she retains a massive influence over popular culture. She is claimed to be one of the most influential women in the world and one of the top 100 most influential people of the 21st century. She retains a huge capacity to motivate and direct viewers and readers with the aim of improving their lives, and in particular the lives of women, helping them to care about the things she cares about. She is seen to be harder on male guests on her show than women, and has always favoured female‐focused charitable endeavours. However, she stands solid as an example of someone who has risen from poverty and childhood disadvantage to achieve great personal wealth, international influence and benefit for society.
Challenge: Oprah’s story is replete with clichés, but it reminds us that hard work and study can pay dividends. What are your study and development plans? Do you have a plan for how to advance your career or personal life? Oprah is clearly very talented, but she was also able to recognise her weaknesses and do things to address them or enhance her strengths. How can you identify your weaknesses and enhance your strengths? Chapter 15 on reflection and emotional intelligence offers a number of tools and advice to help with reflection. Or you could start with a simple list of ‘strengths’ and ‘weaknesses’ and then consider strategies to deal with each. How can you help yourself be a ‘better version of yourself each day’? How can you bring what is most wonderful about you as a person to the fore?
