Oprah was 36 when, in the middle of an interview, she finally realized she needed to stop blaming herself in order to find her true leadership.

Born out of wedlock, Oprah Winfrey grew up in poverty in rural Mississippi. When she was very young, her mother moved north to find work. “I was left with my grandmother. It probably saved my life. It is the reason why I am where I am today.” Yet even as a young child, she had a vision that she could make something of her life. She recalled standing outside on the back porch when she was four, watching her grandmother boiling the laundry in a large cauldron. “I remember thinking, ‘My life won’t be like this. It will be better,’” she said. “It wasn’t from a place of arrogance; it was just a place of knowing that things could be different for me somehow.”

Like most of us, Winfrey started out trying to make it in the world as an individual contributor. She went to college, and while there, she had her first opportunity in broadcasting. “It was very uncomfortable for me at first,” she explained. “I was pretending to be Barbara Walters, looking nothing like her. I had to take the heat from my college classmates calling me a token. I used to say, ‘Yeah, but I’m a paid token.’“
Today Winfrey has built a media empire that is one of the most respected in the world that includes her own production company named Harpo (Oprah spelled backwards). But it was not until the Trudy Chase interview that she realized her broader mission. Ever since the traumatic experiences of her youth, she had felt the need to please people and could never say no. That day she finally understood why. Since then, her mission has gone far beyond pursuing personal success to empowering people all around the world, especially young women.