Oprah Winfrey’s Influence on Philanthropy

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Oprah Winfrey was born on January 29, 1954. Her home has been at Santa Barbra, California. She lives there with her partner, Stedman Graham. Oprah is a renowned talk show host, actress, American media proprietor, producer and philanthropist. The Oprah Winfrey show, multi-award winning talk show is what this great philanthropist is best known for. This show was the highest ranked show of its kind, being syndicated nationally in the period 1986-2011 (Winfrey 3). She is currently the CEO and owner of Oprah Winfrey Network. During her early life as an actress she was in the movie “The Color Purple” and the “Beloved”. In 2013, she starred in the movie, “The Butler” as Gloria Gaines. She has done documentaries and movies for HBO. She was also the voice for Gussie the Goose in “Charlotte’s Web” and also the voice Judge Bumbleden in the “Bee Movie”. This is just a few of the movies she was in.

Oprah has been known as “one of America’s top 50 most generous philanthropist” as she continues to contribute ten percent of her income ($385 million in 2008) to her favorite charities, related to education, youths, and literature. She had donated millions to Tennessee State University which is her alma mater as part of the scholarship funds, The United Negro Fund, to encourage young black Americans to pursue their dreams, and the Harold Washington Library, which is a program for economically disadvantaged Chicago-area young girls.

In 2007, Oprah organized the Oprah Winfrey Foundation which supports the education and empowerment of women, children, and families in the United States and around the world. She then opened the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls near Johannesburg in South Africa, helping young African American girls get an ed...

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...ak through the cultural barriers, especially in the highly diversified American society. Her humanitarian efforts remains a huge lesson for all of us to learn from. Oprah who is now aged 60 will continue to shape the lives of people and the image of philanthropy in this 21st century.

Works Cited

Feinstein, Stephen. Oprah Winfrey. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishers, 2008. Print.

Lofton, Kathryn, and Brenda R. Weber. "The Legacies of Oprah Winfrey: Celebrity, Activism and Reform in the Twenty-first Century." Celebrity Studies 3.1 (2012): 104-105. Print.

Wensink, Joseph. Literary Philanthropy: The Pulitzer Prize, Oprah's Book Club, and Contemporary U.S. Fiction. New York: Millersmith Publishers, 2012. Print.

Winfrey, Oprah, and Bill Adler. The Uncommon Wisdom of Oprah Winfrey: A Portrait in her Own Words. New York: Carol Pub. Group, 1997. Print.

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