Mom Oprah Changed My Life and OWLAG Remade Me | On the Transition of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls

When I first heard the news that the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls will conclude its current form at the close of 2027, handing its campus to South Africa's provincial government while Mama Oprah expands her scholarship reach to twice as many girls across the country, I felt something I've learned not to run from: grief, and gratitude, arriving in the same breath.

I was part of the inaugural class. I graduated at the top of my class as a visual artist. And that place did not simply educate me, it remade me. It gave a girl who had already survived so much the audacity to imagine a life beyond survival.

On Oprah

People know Oprah Winfrey the icon. I know her as a woman who showed up with a mother's grace in the moments when my own trauma surfaced, when my own self-destruction threatened to take the wheel. She did not just open doors for me, boardrooms, stages, rooms with the most influential people of our time. She modeled a kind of conscious parenting that held me accountable and held me safely, both at once. That is not a small thing to model for a girl who had never fully received it before. I carry that grace forward now with my own children. It is one of the most enduring gifts she gave me, not a lesson I was taught, but a way of being I was shown.

On the Doors She Opened

The doors did not stay theoretical. I was invited to speak at the White House under the Obama administration. I went on to work at NationBuilder, where I learned how to build the infrastructure behind movements and campaigns, the actual architecture that allows an idea to become a force capable of reshaping nations. And I was awarded a presidential scholarship to complete my Master's in Strategic Communication, where I went deeper into a single inquiry: how women can use the power of their authenticity and their lived stories to take up space in the world. Being mentored by Oprah was the culmination of that inquiry, the moment I truly understood that the power was already alive in me, and that I exercise it by what I give my attention to, what I focus on, and what I align my energy and action toward.

On the Academy

At OWLAG, I discovered Carol Dweck's growth mindset before I had language for how much I needed it. I found my voice, not metaphorically, but literally, on stages, in rooms, in the belief that what I had to say mattered. That discovery became the foundation of a sixteen-year career on global platforms, four years serving on the Academy's executive board of directors, and countless hours on the strategy and innovation committee going deeper into trauma-informed curriculum design, work I believed in because I had lived what it was meant to repair.

On this transition

I understand this not as an ending but as evolution, the same evolution I ask every woman I coach to trust in her own life. The campus changes form. The mission does not. Over a thousand girls have walked through those gates and out into the world carrying something that compounds: through our families, our networks, and now, for those of us who are parents, through the legacies we pass on. Twice as many girls will now have access to what changed my life. That is not loss. That is the mission scaling beyond what any one campus could hold.

On What Remains

I have spent years living what has now become an international campaign centering the Woman Who Remains: the woman who stays standing after the stripping away, after the devastation, after the world insists she reshape herself yet again. Over the past six years, I discovered a framework through my own journey, ARRVVA: Awareness, Regulation, Reframe, Voice, Vision, Authorship, a process that moves a woman from a state of being into a state of authorship. (Which is how I was able to build my healing arts & storytelling studio Flourish Harmony that I now coach through https://flourishharmony.com/. ) Awareness to see clearly. Regulation to hold her own emotion. Reframe to change the meaning of her circumstance. Voice as the tool that creates a new world. Vision as the asset that lets her see what is possible. And then, authorship: turning that process into tangible things: a podcast, a website, real assets that are changing my life and now live inside my coaching practice, where I work with international clients across America and Canada, women speakers investing in story videos that help them walk on stage having already introduced the truth of who they are.

This is all part of building a world of women who are liberated, joyful, and living in the fullest expression of what they believe they are here to do. This reality, this state of being, this articulation, is the gift that lives through me by virtue of having been mentored by Oprah Winfrey and schooled by this Academy. And these assets live forever. They are already being passed to my children. They are already reshaping my reality.

So I am excited for what is next , for Ms. Winfrey's goal to now touch twice as many lives, at a moment when AI, intellectual property, and empowerment are redefining what real space-taking even means. We are empowered in a new way. And that proves what we have always said: with every woman, with every situation, with every life circumstance, you are the creator of your story. You are the author of your life. And change is a central part of that process.

I hold this moment as my own breakthrough as much as the Academy's: proof that transformation is never a single event, but a woman, and now, an institution continuing to author herself, again and again.

I'm so thankful for every gift I received from being mentored by Mom Oprah and educated at the Academy. It's a full-circle joy to now watch that work live on, as I step into my own greatest dream and share these gifts within a collective of close to 400 career women and girls through Glow Era CPT Collective (https://www.gloweracpt.co.za/ ) . We're hosting our first transformational gathering, the Glow Era: Becoming HER Experience, on September 5th at Seven Sisters (https://www.sevensisters.co.za/event ) : a day of connecting to our truest selves and leaning into the proximity of other women and girls who are doing beautiful, ambitious things throughout their lives and city. I'll be sharing ARRVVA, the self-transformation framework that changed my own life, and I can't wait to hear how each woman in the room channels her power and continues to take up space courageously.

Mpumi "Dream" Nobiva is founder of Flourish Harmony (Pty) Ltd and The Glow Era Podcast, an international keynote speaker, executive coach, and creator of the ARRVVA coaching framework. She was a member of the inaugural graduating class of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls and served four years on its executive board of directors.

Media contact: info@gloweracpt.co.za