Oprah’s back.
The media mogul was a fixture of Coins2Day‘s Most Powerful Women list for years—coming in at No. 6 in 2010 and No. 50 in 2012—before dropping off in 2013 a few years after she ended her long-running daytime show and her cable network OWN wasn’t big enough to hold het slot.
After a five-year hiatus, Winfrey is back on the list thanks to her outsize year of influence in the business world.
Winfrey all but single-handedly revived Weight Watchers after her 2015 investment. Its stock shot up to a high of $103 in June of this year from $6.79 when Winfrey got on board. Her ensuing de-facto spokeswoman status after what the two parties call their strategic partnership can be credited with putting the diet-turned-lifestyle company back on top.
Winfrey’s Weight Watchers investment helped place her for a time this year on the Bloomberg Billionaires’ Index, a list of the world’s 500 richest people. Her $4 billion fortune made her the only black female entrepreneur on the list.
In 2018, Winfrey also put her money behind True Food Kitchen, a healthy restaurant chain. Winfrey didn’t disclose the amount of the investment, but it fits right in with her faith in healthy food businesses.
And don’t forget, this year we saw Winfrey become a near-serious candidate for President after she inspired a political movement with her acceptance speech at the Golden Globes. In the same stretch of time, she starred as an omnipotent celestial being in A Wrinkle in Time—hard to get more powerful than that.
Like her Wrinkle in Time costar Reese Witherspoon before her, Winfrey is a perfect bonus pick for Coins2Day’s 2018 list of the Most Powerful Women in Business. See the full list here.
