Sheri Salata: From Oprah Winfrey to Owning Her Own Story.
Good Life Project
Jonathan Fields / Acast
4.5 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 6 November 2017
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sheri Salata is the co-founder of STORY salata | hala, a media company producing print, television, film and the “This is Fifty with Sheri and Nancy.”
Her new venture into the world of entrepreneurship is the evolution of the "staff job of all staff jobs," a 20-year career with Oprah Winfrey, where Salata became executive producer of The Oprah Winfrey Show, President of Harpo Studios and then joined forces with Oprah Winfrey in the heralded turn-a-round of the OWN network.
In today's conversation, we explore Sheri's early career in advertising and what led her to leave it all behind to explore the entertainment world. We dive into what it was like working at the highest levels with one of the most iconic and influential women in media and business, Oprah Winfrey, and helping run a legendary media empire. We also visit what led Salata to leave it all behind in 2016, shift gears and build something entirely new with her longtime friend, Nancy Hala, on their own terms and in their own time.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You know, I've had the kind of career people would pluck out eyeballs for, but then I've got |
| 0:07.3 | like these drawers stuffed with all these dreams that are like, like, they're about to like, |
| 0:13.8 | like crusty old, you know, like paper photographs. |
| 0:16.6 | They're going to disintegrate if I don't get to it. |
| 0:19.2 | Is that it? |
| 0:23.2 | So when this week's guest, Sherry Salada, left her host as the co-president of the Oprah |
| 0:28.6 | Winfrey Network last year. |
| 0:30.9 | For the first time in more than two decades, she actually didn't know what was coming next. |
| 0:36.0 | She started with Oprah in the mid-90s, rode that wave with her until she became actually |
| 0:41.5 | the executive producer of the show and hit it up the harbour network as a president and |
| 0:47.3 | then made the jump with her to own and help build that entire network. |
| 0:51.8 | Until she hit a point where she started to realize that she has had the most extraordinary |
| 0:56.2 | career surrounded by the most extraordinary people and working with incredible, incredible |
| 1:01.6 | personalities, including Oprah, Oprah Winfrey. |
| 1:05.2 | And yet she hit a point where in her mid-50s, she started to ask questions about what was |
| 1:10.3 | she here to do and who was she here to be and what was this next leg of her adventure? |
| 1:16.1 | What was the story that she wanted to tell moving forward that led her to leave the |
| 1:20.1 | career behind and start a new adventure that she calls story with a dear, dear friend of |
| 1:25.7 | hers, Nancy Hala. |
| 1:26.7 | They also produced a podcast called This Is 50 and some other really fun properties |
| 1:30.9 | and of course we'll link to those. |
| 1:32.2 | But I want to just sit down with her and explore her journey and some of the big moments in |
... |
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