Oprah Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi. She became a media owner and host for 25 years.
From a radio job in high school to a production company and her own television network, Oprah Winfrey built one of the most recognised media brands in the world.
Oprah Winfrey was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, in 1954, to a single teenage mother, and was raised later in Milwaukee. She was sent to live with her father, a barber in Nashville, and landed a job in radio while still in high school. By the age of 19 she was co-anchoring a local evening news programme.
The talk show
Her warm, unscripted delivery led her into daytime talk. She took a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place, and launched her own production company. The Oprah Winfrey Show ran in national syndication for 25 years, from 1986 to 2011.
By the mid-1990s she had reinvented it around books, self-improvement and spirituality. In 2008 she formed her own network, the Oprah Winfrey Network, OWN.
Recognition
She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1994, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2013, and has won many awards including Emmys, a Peabody and a Tony. She is widely described as having been the richest African American of the twentieth century.
For founders, her story is a lesson in ownership. She moved from presenting a show to owning the company that made it, and then the network that carried it.
