NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - September 13, 2010) - O, The Oprah Magazine announces its second annual O Power List, which highlights women and men who have made an impact this year in everything from Hollywood to politics, education to technology, fashion to the environment, and healthcare to journalism. The list will be featured in O's October issue, on newsstands nationwide September 14. A panel event recognizing these powerful individuals will be held on Thursday, September 16 at Hearst Tower in New York City.
"This year's O Power List honorees are brainy, bold and brilliant and we are thrilled to be able to feature them and their outstanding accomplishments," said Susan Casey, editor-in-chief of O, The Oprah Magazine. "From grassroots visionaries to well-known personalities, all of them exude passion for what they do and will undoubtedly inspire our readers."
This year's honorees are being recognized for the power of...
Command: CSM Teresa King
Command Sergeant Major Teresa King, 49, is a self-professed "little farm girl" from North Carolina who always wanted to be a soldier. She became the first female commandant of the U.S. Army Drill Sergeant School, responsible for turning out 1,640 new drill sergeants a year.
Taking a Stand: Kamala Harris
Kamala Harris is the first female African-American district attorney in California history. If elected attorney general next month, she will be the first African-American to win a statewide office in 32 years.
Living Large: Julia Roberts
Once a gangly teenager from Smyrna, Georgia, no one ever imagined Julia Roberts would become America's most successful actress. Over a decade later, Roberts' move to Taos, New Mexico at the height of her career to immerse herself in her family, came as just as much of a surprise. As exemplified by her latest film, Eat, Pray, Love, which is all about the desire to live fully, Roberts has never done things halfway.
Play: Jane McGonigal
At the age of 10, Jane McGonigal started gaming for fun on a Commodore 64 computer. Twenty-two years and one Berkeley PhD later, McGonigal is still gaming, but now as the director of game research and development at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, CA. Now McGonigal thinks that games are more than just fun; she thinks they can save the world. Her first book, Reality is Broken, due out in January, even predicts a game designer will win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Taking a Leap: Lisa Shannon
After watching a 2005 episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show that depicted the horrifying war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Shannon was so moved she contacted Women for Women International, a group that provides financial support, education, and counseling in the Congo and seven other countries, and offered to help. Her book A Thousand Sisters: My Journey into the Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman, illustrates how Shannon's fundraising and ideas eventually helped more than 1,600 Congolese women rebuild their lives and regain hope.
Proof: Esther Duflo
Esther Duflo, a 38-year old French economist, MIT professor, 2009 MacArthur Fellow, and winner of the John Bates Clark Medal for economists under 40, is accredited for her innovative and effective ways of addressing global poverty, as well as her ability to use clinical analysis to measure the results. Duflo encouraged teachers in India to be photographed with their students; the result being higher teacher attendance rates, and higher test scores from students. She also found that using lentils as an incentive for immunizations was effective in boosting immunization rates; just further testament to the importance of Duflo's innovative work.
Vision: Sarah Lewis
Sarah Lewis is more than just a curator; having studied at Oxford and Harvard, currently pursuing her PhD at Yale, and in the process of writing two imaginative books, she can be referred to as a "writer of art, a person who seeks out different angles to questions." This year, as the co-curator at the SITE Santa Fe Biennial, Lewis helped present us with one of the most interesting shows around; she broadened how we look at video art by tracking its development and adding to its substance.
Make-believe: Sarah Ruhl
A MacArthur Fellowship winner and 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist, playwright Sarah Ruhl successfully maintains a careful balance between absurd and matter-of-fact, other worldly and realer than real. This balance exemplifies Ruhl's belief in the potent power of make-believe.
Graceful Gravitas: Diane Sawyer
Considered one of the world's most accomplished journalists, few have Diane Sawyer's blend of intelligence and aplomb. This perfect combination of brains and confidence has allowed her to be on-the-spot for some of the world's most important news stories, from the Three Mile Island meltdown to the Taliban's treatment of women, and to score exclusive interviews with everyone from Fidel Castro to Saddam Hussein.
Presence: Viola Davis
Viola Davis recently received her second Tony, this time for her role as the wife of an ex-baseball player in August Wilson's Fences. Davis is recognized for her signature intensity, which can also be seen in the 2008 film Doubt, for which she received an Oscar nomination, something the Juilliard-trained actress achieves through deep study of each character she portrays.
Bearing Witness: Lynsey Addario
Lynsey Addario, 36, is a photographer who has spent the last ten years documenting the world's wars and humanitarian crises. Whether she is in a truck full of Sudanese rebels in Darfur or a ditch in Afghanistan's famously volatile Korengal Valley, we are able to witness the power of what Addario saw because of the compassion portrayed in her images.
Endurance: Marge Champion
Marge Champion, in partnership with her then husband, Gower Champion, danced her way into Hollywood stardom and eventually went on tour with Harry Belafonte. Even after facing a number of personal devastations, Champion's passion remained; she returned to Broadway in 2001 for a revival of Stephen Sondheim's Follies, and at the age of 91 she continues to dance and choreograph.
The Big Picture: Rebecca Onie
While she was a prelaw student at Harvard working in the housing unit at Greater Boston Legal Services, Rebecca Onie quickly saw the parallels between poverty and poor health. She came up with the idea for Project Health, a nonprofit organization that places student volunteers in urban clinics to help patients with housing, food, legal aid, and other basic needs. Having started with 10 volunteers, it has expanded to 600, and serves 5,000 families.
One Voice: Lynn Henning
Lynn Henning, a 42-year old farm owner from Michigan, and now the North American winner of this year's Goldman Environmental Prize, used her verve and tenacity to save her family farm from harmful pollution. When Henning realized the nearby factory farms were polluting the air and water, and endangering the health of her loved ones, she organized her neighbors, lobbied her state regulatory agencies and the EPA, and tirelessly amassed evidence of factory farms' dangerous manure disposal practices.
Fearlessness: Zahra Rahnavard
Artist, university professor, political activist, and mother of three, Zahra Rahnavard is also the wife of reformist candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi, in Iran's presidential elections last year, and the first political wife to campaign alongside her husband in this male-dominated country. After incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad challenged her academic credentials, she even called a press conference accusing him of lying and demanding an apology.
Style: Vera Wang
Vera Wang has defied the fleeting nature common for fashion designers and has been designing for almost 25 years. Often a trend happens, and then it is gone; so, too, the trendmaker; but in Wang's case her perseverance, elegance and cool have allowed her to remain one of the most important and famous fashion designers of today.
Authenticity: Jane Lynch
One of the only openly gay actresses and former Second City player, Jane Lynch has made a name for herself with her comical, but no-nonsense characters. Whether she is preying on Steve Carrell in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, or snarling her way through hit television show Glee as the decidedly un-cheery cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester, Lynch's recent Emmy win is proof that she doesn't mess around.
Connections: Kelly Chapman Meyer
Environmentalist, philanthropist, and wife to Ron Meyer, one of the most powerful (and well-liked) men in Hollywood, Kelly Meyer, 49, has helped raise more than $40 million for cancer research, lobbied Washington to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act, built California's first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Platinum-certified home, held prominent positions with the Natural Resources Defense Council, and created a school program to combat childhood obesity, among her many other accomplishments.
Academics: Deborah Kenny
Deborah Kenny, a mother of three and former teacher, found her purpose in re-envisioning public school education. Kenny sank her savings into a revolutionary charter school, Harlem Village Academy, which opened in 2003 with two fifth grade classes and has expanded into three schools with more than 700 kids who are actively fighting poverty through education.
And now for the men...
- Showing Up: Anderson Cooper
- Seizing the Moment: LeBron James
- The Pea: Jamie Oliver
- Passion: Richard O'Barry
O, The Oprah Magazine (www.oprah.com) encourages confident, intelligent women to reach for their dreams, express their individual style and make choices, guided by the values of one of the most charismatic women in the world, O Editorial Director Oprah Winfrey. With an emphasis on personal growth, the magazine inspires, addressing every aspect of a woman's life -- the material, the intellectual and the emotional -- and deeply connects with more than 15 million readers every month (MRI, Spring 2009). O, The Oprah Magazine, which also publishes a South African edition, is a co-venture between Hearst Magazines, a unit of The Hearst Corporation (www.hearst.com), and Harpo Print, LLC.
Contact Information:
Letena Lindsay
(Hearst Magazines)
letena_lindsay@yahoo.com
(917) 767-9537
