In addition to being a tenured professor at Mississippi Valley State, Oprah Winfrey’s first cousin, Jo Baldwin, is also an ordained minister who preaches at two churches every Sunday.
Oprah knew that Ms. Baldwin was a deeply religious woman when she hired her to be her speechwriter shortly after the enormously popular Oprah Winfrey Show debuted. Later she promoted Baldwin to VP of her company Harpo Inc, according to Gawker.com.
“When I received my PhD in 1985 from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Oprah asked me where I was going to work,” said Jo Baldwin in the summer of 2010. “I said I would be applying for a position at Ebony magazine as a copy editor. Oprah said she did not like Linda Johnson Rice [owner of Ebony] and I should come to work for her instead. So I did.”
“I was to work for her for three years, but she fired me without notice after two years… I heard from someone later that she got rid of me because she got tired of me talking about Jesus all the time… Oprah preferred the teachings of Shirley MacLaine’s books, such as Dancing in the Light and Out on a Limb, which Oprah made me read but I didn’t think much of.”
