David Meade & Oprah Winfrey: Live In Conversation
May 19, 2026Join David, for a one-to-one live conversation with Oprah Winfrey on 14th Sept at 3Arena, Dublin.
Every now and again, an opportunity lands on your desk that you have to read twice. On Monday, 14 September 2026, I will have the honour of sitting down one-to-one, on stage at Dublin’s 3Arena, with Oprah Winfrey, for the first ever autumn edition of the Pendulum Summit.
It is, by any measure, the most significant interview of my career — and for the audience in the room, it is one of the rarest opportunities Irish business will see this year.
It is also, importantly, an evening with two dimensions. Oprah Winfrey is not only a case study in modern entrepreneurship. She is, for millions of people around the world, a deeply personal source of hope. Her own story — of childhood poverty in rural Mississippi, of the trauma she has spoken about so openly, of the long climb from a local news desk to global influence — has inspired generations of people who have navigated their own setbacks, carried their own losses, and quietly dreamed of a better life for themselves and the people around them.
So this will not only be an insight into a career. It will be an insight into the person. Into who she is, what she believes, and the journey that shaped her.
It is easy to think of Oprah Winfrey as a broadcaster. She is, of course, the most influential one of her generation. But the longer you study her career, the more obvious it becomes that her real masterclass is in business.
In 1986, when ABC offered to syndicate The Oprah Winfrey Show, she made a decision that would later be taught in business schools around the world: she negotiated to own the show outright through her own production company, Harpo Productions, rather than take a larger pay cheque. That single move — choosing equity over salary, ownership over employment — turned a daytime talk show host into the operator of one of the most valuable independent media businesses in history.
The Oprah Winfrey Show ran in national syndication for twenty-five years, from 1986 to 2011, won 47 Daytime Emmy Awards, and became the highest-rated talk show in American television history. She went on to build OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network, a publishing and lifestyle business, and a book club that can move hundreds of thousands of units with a single endorsement. In 2003 she became the world’s first Black woman billionaire. Forbes today values her at around $3.2 billion. Her honours include a Tony, a Peabody, two Academy Award nominations, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Whatever your sector — whether you are founding, scaling, leading or investing — there is something in this body of work that is directly relevant to the decisions on your desk this quarter. Brand. Ownership. Leverage. Distribution. Resilience. Reinvention. The compounding value of trust. She has lived all of it, at scale, for forty years.
Oprah Winfrey talks to reporters during a press tour that followed the launch of her cable network, OWN, in January.
Frederick M. Brown/Getty ImagesThe event is called Up Close With Oprah Winfrey. It is an in-depth, on-stage conversation in front of a live audience, exploring the insights, the strategic decisions and the perspectives that have shaped one of the most extraordinary careers of our lifetime. Niall Breslin will perform on the night, and Bressie and I will share the stage together before Oprah joins me for the main conversation.
My intention as her host is straightforward. The questions I want to ask are the ones a room full of leaders and operators would ask if they had the floor — about resilience, about the decisions she nearly did not make, about how to build something that outlasts the hype cycle, and about what she has learned that she wishes she had known earlier. The aim is a conversation that is useful long after you leave the building.
This is, in the truest sense of the phrase, a once-in-a-career evening. Oprah is not on tour. There is one date. There is one room. And when the lights come down on 14 September, that is it.
Tickets are on sale now through Ticketmaster Ireland, with premium VIP experiences also available. If you lead a team, run a business, or have someone in your organisation you would like to invest in, this is one of those rare nights that earns its place in the calendar.
Do not sit on this one. I will see you at the 3Arena.
— David
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