During ESSENCE Festival of the Culture, when ESSENCE Ventures President & CEO Caroline Wanga sat with media mogul Oprah Winfrey, it was a different format than usual for the pair. Wanga, who interviews her definition of a “chief” every issue, usually chooses a private space close to the individual; and Oprah almost always conducts the interviews rather than being interviewed. However, in this setting, on a sweltering day in New Orleans at the top of July, Winfrey and Wanga sat in front of a crowd at the largest festival per day in the United States, speaking their hearts and souls to a sea of Black women at the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. Wanga’s approach was intimate, despite the broad reach of the conversation. Winfrey expressed thoughts on some of the -fondest moments of her career, letting the audience in on her perspectives about her success. Winfrey, who started out in TV working as a news anchor, went on to host the nation’s most-watched daytime talk show. Now, she’s the founder of her own production company, Harpo Productions, Inc., founder and editorial director of her own digital media outlet, Oprah -Daily—and, most importantly, the CEO of her life. Wanga’s talk with Winfrey featured affection and confidences, offering a personal and relatable touch from a true legend.
Caroline Wanga: Okay, I need you all in the audience to stop talking—because we ain’t got a lot of time to have this life-changing moment.
As a part of my leadership in ESSENCE, we of course know that Black culture is about storymakers and storydoers, but we get to be storytellers, too. Now, you could spell chief with a capital C and have everything else be lowercase. And then there’s some times when you got to spell it with all caps—because you have the opportunity to interview one of the chiefs of all chiefs. So with no further ado, ladies, gentlemen and others, please stand to your feet and welcome Ms. Oprah Winfrey.
So I usually open with a really simple question—and I open with this question because I think the answer to the question changes over the course of people’s lives, and it’s super simple. Who is Oprah Winfrey? Who is she? Your words.
Oprah Winfrey: It actually hasn’t changed over the course of my life—it’s deepened. I am, first and foremost, a daughter of the most high King—first and foremost. And I’ve known this since I was 4 years old, watching my grandmother hang clothes out on the line and saying to me, “Oprah Gail, you’re going to have to learn how to do this for yourself.” And the voice inside myself, the chief that I have followed my whole life, said, No, Grandmama, that ain’t going to be my life. But I had sense enough not to say it out loud. And so I would say that every powerful, good, formative decision I have made in my life has been because I’ve been connected to the most high, the source of the divine.
And when I am listening to that, and when I am paying attention and I am obedient to that call, life flows for me. And when I am not, when I’m off course, when I haven’t done the work of staying centered and staying spiritually connected, that is when I have made the most mistakes in my life. But that thing that I call God, inside myself and inside all of us, that is above, around and through, that we can’t even define, has led me to this space all my life. And first and foremost, I’m connected to that.
Wanga: I’m going to ask you to dig into one part of what you said, if you wouldn’t mind—the parts where you got off course and it brought you back. I believe that a lot of times we sit as inspirational women and we tell our stories, but we tell it as if it happened perfectly. And then little girls like Caroline are out in the audience, and they know they’re flawed. So they remove themselves from believing that success can happen, because everybody that told their stories had never made a mistake. What does coming back from being off path look like for you, so that those who need it can hear it?
Winfrey: It looks like, and you know this Caroline, it looks like giving your power over to somebody else. It looks like believing that you are not who God created you to be. It looks like following somebody else’s lead and listening to what other people are saying your life should be, instead of paying attention to that still, small voice that is within every one of us, that is undeniable if you are still enough to listen. What I’ve learned is, anytime you’re asking anybody for anything—like, “Do you like this dress? What do you think of this? And should I marry him, or should I go there?”—anytime you have to stop and ask other people what you should do, that is the number-one signal to yourself that you need to get still and hear what the true voice is saying to you.
So I have been off course—I mean, in my 20s. That’s why I have all my daughter girls from South Africa—and I just say the 20s are about figuring it out.
Wanga: What’s the positive side of that statement, where you have this really great moment—and if you’re like me, as a Black girl, you start to believe that it’s luck? I’m not really this good. That was luck—and so I’m not going to choose to believe in my greatness. Those “one times,” where we should believe it can happen again. The positive side, the pursuit of purpose—what does that look like?
Winfrey: Well, this is what I know. I know that I belong to the King. I know this. And so I would have to say, and it is because I remember, I was in ESSENCE—I think either the first or second year that there was an ESSENCE magazine. And being able to see and identify yourself, in the faces of others who look like you, is so important. But I grew up actually really believing, sitting in the second pew on the right-hand side every Sunday, believing that I was indeed God’s child, to the point that when I went to school and people would ask me, “Who’s [your] daddy?” I’d say, “Jesus is my daddy.”
Wanga: I did too. People would be like, “Are you married?” I’m like, “Jesus is my bridegroom.”
Winfrey: Absolutely. So, 1975 was my first job on television, and I was the only Black woman. I have never—I know that I belong, as God’s daughter. I never have been in a place where I didn’t think I deserved to be. I have never, ever sat in a boardroom or been in a space where I felt like I don’t deserve to be here. I had the benefit of having Maya Angelou—I teared up when I first heard your voice backstage, because I said, “You remind me of Maya.” You speak with such authority—it reminds me so much of Maya.
But one of the things that Maya taught me to understand, as my mother-sister-friend, was that she used to say, “You alone are enough. You alone are enough,” in that voice of yours. And she would say, “Those people who are talking about you out there cannot hold a candle to the light God already has shining on your face. Can you see the light? Can you feel the light?” So I could see that my life was rising, Caroline, and I wanted to meet that rising. And I believe all of us have a calling on ourselves, to meet the rising of your life. And that is what the Creator wants for all of us. Everybody has a rising. And so I feel that I have been obedient to that call.
Wanga: I know. So I said that “Chief to Chief” is about helping people find the chiefs within themselves. For those that are here, wayfinding their chiefdom, what would you advise them to do?
Winfrey: It doesn’t ever come “out there.” It’s not out there. It’s always in here. And as I was saying, I have journals. I’ve kept a journal since I was 15. Around the nineties, I just started doing gratitude journals—but before that, I have all this, “Woe is me, Lord, help me, Jesus” journal. And one of the things I’ve learned and that I love about journaling is that you get to see your own growth. It’s a powerful thing. And one of the things that I know for sure is that any question that you have about your life, the answer is already there, waiting inside you. And you cannot get to the answer by asking everybody. You can only get to the answer by getting still. And when you don’t know what to do, you do nothing—until the answer rises up inside you, and you get the answer.
So my advice is to work on making yourself the master of your faith and the captain of your soul—being the chief of your own life. I built a leadership academy in South Africa, and in the beginning, all the girls were like, “Oh, what are we going to do? What are we going to do with our lives?” And what I emphasize now is exactly what you’re talking about here—being the chief for yourself, being the chief executive of your own life, mastering your faith. Because every thought, every thought is important, but more important than the thought is the intention behind the thought. So let me just share this with you all. The Oprah Winfrey Show was number one for 25 years, and everybody came after me. But we maintain being number one because first and foremost in my principles is that for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.
The reason why my show was number one for 25 years— around 1989, I got this principle. I read it in a book called Seat of the Soul, by Gary Zukav. And he described this whole idea of intention. So I sat the producers down, and I said, “We are not going to produce a show again unless everyone is clear about what the intention is. So do not bring me your ideas unless you are clear about why you’re bringing the idea.
“And whatever idea you bring to me, I have to find a level of truth in it—because I cannot sit in the chair and fake anything. I can’t fake cooking. I can’t fake bacon. I can’t fake it. So if you bring me the idea and I can find a thread of truth in the idea that I can align myself with—I can sit in a chair for an hour and talk about whatever. As long as I can find one thing that I can be sincerely honest and truthful about, then I can be curious about all the rest.” That motivation, to lead with intention, changed the trajectory of that show.
So, before every important interview—I remember the last time I interviewed Whitney Houston. We did the whole, “Hey, girl, how you doing?” All that. And I stopped the cameras and said, “We’re going to go in the back here.” And I said, “Tell me, what is your intention? What do you want to happen, so that when you leave this interview, you won’t come out saying, ‘Well, you should have asked me, and I wish you’d have said...’” And so I have done that for every important event, circumstance, experience in my life: “Tell me what is your intention, so that my intention can align with your intention.” And that is how I am—not just the chief executive of my own life, but my companies are all aligned, based on intention. What is it we really want to do? And for me, it is understanding that what you want and what I want are the same thing. We want to be the highest expression, the purest expression, the most truthful expression of ourselves as human beings. And you want to meet the rising of your life.
Wanga: Is there anything else you want to share before we leave here today?
Winfrey: What I want to say is, it’s yours for the asking. It’s yours for the asking. Get clear on what it is you’re asking for. The answer will be revealed to you if you get clarity about what it is you really want. I spent many years talking to my audiences after the show, and I would always say, “Tell me what you want. Tell me what you want.” People always say, “I just want to be happy.” Well, what does that look like for you? Most people haven’t actually given it real thought. Your happiness has been designed by what your mama wanted, what you thought you wanted when you were 17 or 25. It continually evolves, as you said in the beginning of this experience we’re sharing together. Who are you now, versus who you thought you wanted to be however many years ago? And it’s yours to design. Your life is yours to design with the Creator. So you are the cocreator and designer of your life. And it’s yours for the asking.
Wanga: Ladies and gentlemen, Oprah Winfrey.