Oprah Winfrey has been selected as the 2013 recipient of The Hollywood Reporter's Sherry Lansing Leadership Award, which recognizes a woman who is a pioneer and a leader in her industry.
Journalist and activist Maria Shriver will present Winfrey with the award at THR's 22nd annual Women in Entertainment Breakfast, which will be held Dec. 11 at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles.
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"Oprah is an inspiration to us all," The Hollywood Reporter editorial director Janice Min said. "She has wielded her tremendous influence to empower women both here in Hollywood and around the world, and motivated countless individuals to contribute to causes that better their communities. She is the embodiment of this award."
Adds Sherry Lansing: "When I learned that Oprah had agreed to accept the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award, I was both thrilled and humbled. No one exemplifies leadership and professional distinction more than Oprah. Her transformative work as a media entrepreneur and as a philanthropist has set the bar extremely high for generations to come. The Hollywood Reporter could not have chosen to honor a more deserving individual than Oprah."
The breakfast, presented by Lifetime and sponsored by Gucci, Samsung Galaxy, Audi, Roberto Coin, City National Bank and Loyola Marymount University, coincides with the publication of The Hollywood Reporter's annual Top 100 Most Powerful Women in Entertainment list, on which Winfrey has been featured numerous times.
Also during the breakfast, the 2013 Women in Entertainment Mentorship Program, which pairs ambitious inner-city girls with leading women executives from media and entertainment, will be presented. The 2013 mentees will spend an afternoon with their mentor every two weeks for a year learning the ins and outs of developing a career in media and entertainment. Past mentors have included Anne Sweeney, president of Disney/ABC Television Group and co-chair of Disney Media Networks; A+E Networks chairman Abbe Raven; 20th Century Fox chairman Dana Walden; and Universal Pictures co-chairman Donna Langley.
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Winfrey, who spent 25 years as host of TV's top-rated talk show, is receiving critical acclaim for her portrayal of Gloria Gaines in the awards contender and box-office hit "Lee Daniels’ The Butler." She also serves as CEO of OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network in addition to overseeing a media empire that includes O, The Oprah Magazine and a SiriusXM channel. She also is active in social media, with more than 21 million Twitter followers and nearly 9 million followers on Facebook.
Her other accomplishments include her philanthropic work through her private charity, The Oprah Winfrey Foundation. In this role, she has created The Oprah Winfrey Scholars Program, which gives scholarships to students determined to use their education to give back to their communities in the United States and abroad, and has established The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy Foundation, to which she has contributed more than $100 million toward the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls — South Africa, which opened in January 2007.
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Additionally, in 1998, she founded the public charity Oprah's Angel Network, which raised more than $80 million, with 100 percent of the donations funding charitable projects and grants across the globe, helping to establish 60 schools in 13 countries, create scholarships, support women's shelters and build youth centers and homes.
Previous recipients of the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award include Diane Keaton, last year's honoree, along with Jane Fonda, Helen Mirren, Meryl Streep, Halle Berry, Jodie Foster, Glenn Close and Barbara Walters.