Oprah talks up business to join top 10 powerful women
The queen of daytime chat, who also has her own prime time talk show, leapt three places since last year in Fortune magazine’s annual top 50.
Her ascent is largely down to improvements in her show and successes with her magazine and book club. Ms Winfrey, 49, is chairwoman of her firm Harpo Inc.
“Last year, Oprah was losing steam, cutting back her talk show schedule and extinguishing her book club,” Fortune said in its October 13 issue.
“But the darling of daytime has punched up show production, revived the book club and revved up her magazine, O.
Ms Winfrey is the most famous of the top 10, which is led by Carly Fiorina, the 49-year-old chairwoman and chief executive of computer group Hewlett-Packard.
“As head of a $72 billion (€64bn) company, Carly is undeniably the most powerful woman in business,” Fortune says.
EBay president and chief executive Meg Whitman, 47, comes in at number two, followed by Avon head Andrea Jung, 45, Xerox chief Anne Mulcahy, 50, and Marjorie Magner, 54, who leads Citigroup bank’s Global Consumer Group.
Among the biggest losers was Columbia Pictures chairman Amy Pascal, who dropped 12 positions to number 38.
Fortune put her fate down to the poor performance of the three Columbia films this year, including the much criticised Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez movie Gigli.
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