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’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.

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 20^th 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. 

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.

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. 

Maya Angelou has written plays, screenplays and performed as an actor in television programs, series and films, receiving an Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actress in the Television Series Roots. In 1998, Maya Angelou’s presented her directorial film debut for the film, Down in the Delta.

Maya Angelou is fluent in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and West African Fanti. With over 3.2 million Facebook fans, Maya Angelou is known as “the people’s poet” her voice continues to reach across lines of age, race, sexual preference and religion. Maya Angelou champions diversity and her belief that “we are more alike than unalike.”