“To the rest of the world watching, you have got to come to Australia,” said Oprah Winfrey during filming of her show from the Sydney Opera House in December 2010.

The Queen of Entertainment summed up her experiences Down Under with a huge thumbs up for the Lucky Country, when she screamed to her audience of 6000 guests at Oprah’s Ultimate Australian Adventure show, “I love Australia, I love Australia, I love Australia,”.

Oprah Winfrey has been reported to be one of the richest, if not the richest, and most influential women in the world today.

Love her or hate her (though I find it hard to imagine why you would), she has been, and continues to be, one of the most profoundly inspirational characters of our era.

Like most high achievers though, Oprah has an amazing story – one that has shaped the great charismatic figure though hardship and struggle.

Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a teenage single mother and later raised in an inner-city Milwaukee neighborhood. She experienced considerable hardship during her childhood, including being raped at the age of nine and becoming pregnant at 14; her son died in infancy.

Sent to live with the man she calls her father, a barber in Tennessee, Winfrey landed a job in radio while still in high school and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19. Her emotional ad-lib delivery eventually got her transferred to the daytime talk show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place she launched her own production company, Harpo, and she became internationally syndicated.

Credited with creating a more intimate confessional form of media communication, Oprah is thought to have popularized and revolutionized the tabloid talk show.

By the mid 1990s, she had reinvented her show with a focus on literature, self-improvement, and spirituality. Though criticized for unleashing confession culture and promoting controversial self-help fads, she is often praised for overcoming adversity to become a benefactor to others.

From 2006 to 2008, her support of Barack Obama, by one estimate, delivered over a million votes in the close 2008 Democratic primary race, to aid his achievement in becoming the first African American President.

Oprah’s programmes have made her an iconic figure across the globe and along with her work for charitable institutions, she has been acclaimed as one of the greatest philanthropists in American History, if not World History.

Tony’s Viewpoint: I am always fascinated and inspired by people who overcome adversity and pursue their dreams with single-minded determination – especially when the achievement of them is of such incredible benefit to so many other people in the world.

To think that your own vision for your future can impact so magnificently on the lives of people you may never even meet, is truly uplifting.

In Oprah’s early days, she used to annoy me when interviewing, because I felt that she wanted to answer her own questions before her guests could! Since then, though she has learned so much and helped so many, she is amazing.

One of Oprah’s key messages is that it is really important to find time to relax and nourish your spirit. If you need any help with finding work/life balance, feel free to contact me via this site.