Alicia Keys is an award-winning R&B musician, actress and philanthropist. Keys has won 14 Grammy Awards and 14 NAACP Image Awards, has 5 platinum albums and is co-founder of Keep A Child Alive, a foundation that provides medication and support for children and families affected by AIDS. Keys has starred in several films, including Smokin’ Aces, The Nanny Diaries, and The Secret Lives of Bees. Alicia Keys most recent album, Girl on Fire, released in November 2012, debuted at the top of the charts and is her fifth number one album in the United States. In October of the same year, Keys released a mobile interactive storytelling app for children called The Journals of Mama Mae and LeeLee . Alicia Keys is also an author of a book, Tears for Water: Songbook of Poems and Lyrics, which was published in 2005.
Born in Harlem and raised in New York City’s Hells Kitchen, Keys cultivated her artistic talent from an early age, beginning to play the piano at age 7. Keys graduated from the Professional Performing Arts Academy at 16 as valedictorian of her class. Although she received a full scholarship to Columbia University, Keys decided to pursue her love for music and signed with her first label. Her first album, Songs in A Minor, won multiple Grammys in 2002, including Best R&B Album and Song of the Year for Fallin’.
In 2010, Keys married Kasseem David Dean, hip-hop producer Swizz Beatz and gave birth to their son, Egypt, October 2010. Jennifer Hudson
Jennifer Hudson is an award-winning performing artist. Born in Chicago and raised in the Englewood neighborhood, Hudson developed her soulful musical roots while attending church with her family. As a singer on a Disney cruise ship, she successfully auditioned for the third season of American Idol in Atlanta in 2004. Although Hudson came in seventh on the show, she went on to build a highly successful music and acting career. Her film debut in Dreamgirls, in which Hudson played Effie White, won her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2007. Her first album, Jennifer Hudson, sold over one million copies worldwide and won a Grammy for Best R&B Album. Jennifer Hudson’s most recent album, I Remember Me, released in 2011, is certified gold in the United States. Hudson performed at the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize Concert.
Jennifer Hudson’s 2012 book, I Got This: How I Changed My Ways and Lost What Weighed Me Down, documents how Hudson developed a healthy lifestyle while rising to fame. Hudson has appeared in many films since her role in Dreamgirls, including the movie Sex in the City and Winnie, in which she played Winnie Mandela.
Following the 2008 murders of three family members, Hudson founded the Julian D. King Gift Foundation in honor of her young nephew who was killed. Before school begins each year, the foundation gives backpacks and other school supplies to children in the Englewood area. Hudson also organizes an annual Toy Drive in Chicago, giving away thousands of gifts each Christmas to needy children across the Chicago area. Regina Taylor
Regina Taylor’s career spans film, television, theater and writing. Taylor has won recognition as an accomplished actress, playwright and director. As the first African-American actress to portray Juliet in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet on Broadway, she also received Emmy nominations and won a Golden Globe for her role as Lilly Harper in the television series I’ll Fly Away. Regina Taylor’s play Crowns, based on the book by the same name, is among the most-performed musicals in the United States.
Taylor’s other award-winning works as a playwright include Oo-Bla-Dee, Drowning Crow, and The Trinity River Plays. She most recently wrote and directed Post Black a monologue performed by Micki Grant, Carmen De Lavallade and Ruby Dee.
On television, she most recently starred in the CBS drama The Unit. Her performance as Anita Hill in television movies Strange Justice won her Peabody and Gracie awards. Taylor has appeared in such films as “The Negotiator,” “Courage Under Fire,” “A Family Thing,” “The Keeper, and “Lean on Me.”
In 2010, she received the Hope Abelson Artist-In-Residence Award from Northwestern University. Her work there includes creating a festival, The State(s) of America – The Regina Taylor Project, which asks students to use their own voices to tell stories of our time. She is also the National Spokesperson for the Ovarian Cancer Symptom Awareness Organization.
Taylor was born and raised in Dallas, Texas and currently lives in Chicago. Kofi Annan
Kofi Annan served two terms as Secretary-General of the United Nations (1997-2006), and spent more than four decades within the organization, winning the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the United Nations for his work for peace and justice in 2001. Through the Kofi Annan Foundation, Mr. Annan works for increased peace and security, sustainable development, and human rights.
Annan’s 2012 memoir, Interventions: A Life in War and Peace, follows his rise through the organization and his peacemaking work through some of the late 20th century’s most brutal conflicts, in Bosnia, Rwanda and throughout the Middle East.
Born in Kumasi, Ghana, Annan attended university in his home country; in the United States at Macalester College, where he received his undergraduate degree, and at MIT; and in Europe. He joined the United Nations in 1962, working for the World Health Organization in Geneva. In 1990, after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Annan helped more than 900 international UN staff and non-Iraqi nationals return to their home countries. From 1995-1996, he served as the Secretary-General’s Special Representative to the former Yugoslavia.
In 1997, Annan was chosen to be Secretary-General of the United Nations. In this role, he helped work to mitigate violence and unrest around the Middle East and Africa, advocated for stronger environmental and human rights standards, and began establishing the Global Aids and Health Fund.
Currently, Annan serves as chairman of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa and chairman of the Africa Progress Panel. In early 2012, he was appointed as the UN-Arab League envoy to Syria to end the civil war, but stepped down in August 2012. Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey is an unparalleled media personality, having produced and hosted the top-rated, award-winning The Oprah Winfrey Show. Winfrey founded Harpo Studios, a cross-platform media company and now leads OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network. Winfrey is one of the world’s most influential figures and one of the United States’ top philanthropists.
Winfrey makes her return to the silver screen in 2013, with her role in The Butler, a Lee Daniels film about the African-American butler who served in the White House for six United States presidents. Winfrey will also continue to lead as CEO of her television network OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network, which launched in 2011.
Oprah Winfrey was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi and graduated from high school in Nashville, Tennessee. She began her broadcast career at 19 as the first African-American woman and youngest anchor for Nashville’s WTVF-TV. She hosted shows in Baltimore and Chicago before launching The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1986. Harpo Studios, which produced the show, was created in 1988. The Oprah Winfrey Show went on to be the top-ranked talk show in history, remaining number one for 25 seasons. Winfrey and her program won more than 40 Daytime Emmy Awards, including seven for Outstanding Host and nine for Outstanding Talk Show. Having won many awards Winfrey and her show withdrew themselves from consideration for the award after accepting the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998. Harpo Studios has launched several successful televisions shows, including The Dr. Oz Show, Rachel Ray, Dr. Phil, and The Nate Berkus Show.
Winfrey launched O, The Oprah Magazine, in 2000. The magazine has a circulation of 2.35 million readers each month.Oprah.com features many of Winfrey’s other projects, including the magazine and television network.
In June 2012, Oprah Winfrey reintroduced her popular book club as an interactive, multi-platform reading club that harnesses the power of social media, bringing passionate readers together to discuss inspiring stories. After being selected as the club’s inaugural book, Wild by Cheryl Strayed (Knopf) returned to the top of the New York Times Best Sellers list and spent six consecutive weeks at #1. The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis is the club’s second selection.
Winfrey is the recipient of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Bob Hope Humanitarian Award, the Elie Wiesel Foundation Humanitarian Award and in 2011 The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded her an honorary Academy Award with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
Winfrey began acting in 1985, when she played Sophia in The Color Purple, for which she received Academy and Golden Globe Award nominations. She also starred in Beloved, which Harpo Films, a division of Harpo, produced. Winfrey has supported the production of many movies through Harpo Films, including Tuesdays with Morrie, The Great Debaters, and Their Eyes Were Watching God. Winfrey also helped distribute Lee Daniels’ film Precious.
Oprah Winfrey has given millions of dollars to support scholarships and founded the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa. Winfrey started the Oprah’s Angels Network in 1998, raising more than $80 million that have gone on to support scholarships, schools, shelters, youth centers and homes around the world. Oprah’s Angels Network gave its final grants in 2010 in support of U.S. charter schools.
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