The Life of Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey was born in Indiana in 1942. As a child, she was brought up in poverty and the anti-war movement. Her father died when she was very young, her mother made do with what little money she had, but she worked hard and eventually found success in business. Her grandmother, Mary, left behind eleven children and four older sisters and to help with the birth of this new addition to the family, she was sent to live with her Uncle Jake, a topiary farmer in Texas.
Olivia began taking lessons at a young age. While attending a day school in nearby Lehigh Acres, Florida, she attended evening classes from a community college in Fort Lauderdale. As a teen, she attended New York University, where she met her husband, John. In 1993, after a year and a half as the Vice President of Operations for Time-Warner Communications, Olivia chose to leave that position to concentrate on her own career and pursue a master’s degree in public relations at Wake Forest University.
Though her education continued, Olivia felt that her work and experience in the business world provided her with the knowledge necessary to succeed in an entrepreneurial career. That same year, she began researching the possibility of starting her own company. At that time, no one, including herself, had even heard of Internet marketing.
To learn about Internet marketing, Olivia returned to Wake Forest University, where she took a seminar, Internet Marketing 101. At that time, most students were focused on marketing their products, not researching new technology. Yet, Olivia found herself intrigued by the newest way to advertise. She continued her studies and earned a degree in advertising management.
When Olivia returned to Wake Forest, she took some time off to focus on her Internet marketing career. One day while visiting Atlanta, Georgia, she stopped into a website that claimed to be promoting Internet marketing techniques. After reading the site, she decided to purchase a copy of the book titled The Power of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and started studying its techniques.
As she continued to read about her mentor, Milton Friedman, a popular economist and sometime advisor to President Ronald Reagan, it became apparent to her that she wanted to become Friedman’s student. She then decided to join the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) community. After learning the basics of the SEO industry, she finally decided to go for it. She joined several different SEO communities online and was soon making frequent visits to speak to other students, some of whom had started their own ventures.
Eventually, she graduated from a program at Stanford University, where she was encouraged to move on to Milton Friedman’s office to speak to Friedman about becoming his student. At the time, she felt that the idea was intriguing, especially after watching him lecture. After that, he encouraged her to consider studying for her master’s degree. Still, she would need to complete her undergraduate studies first.
After completing her master’s degree in economics at Stanford, she joined the faculty of the University of Chicago. She later moved to New York to teach at the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University. While in New York, she met John.
