Stephanie Stokes Oliver
BIOGRAPHY
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Photo by Chris Cone
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Stephanie Stokes Oliver is the vice-president of publishing for Unity, the publisher of the Daily Word, Unity Magazine, Unity House Books, and dailyword.com. A publisher and editor, she is also an author, and has contributed to several anthologies. With her husband and their Caribbean hotel partners, she is co-founder of a villa retreat in Anguilla called Ultimacy.
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- Following a childhood aspiration to become an author, Oliver has written three books: DAILY CORNBREAD: 365 Secrets for a Healthy Mind, Body, and Spirit (Doubleday, 1999), SEVEN SOULFUL SECRETS For Finding Your Purpose and Minding Your Mission (Doubleday, 2001), and SONG FOR MY FATHER: Memoir of an All-American Family (Atria, 2004).
Recently released in paperback, SONG FOR MY FATHER, was reviewed in the Washington Post and Town & Country. The memoir chronicles her coming-of-age in the turbulent 1960s and paints an affectionate picture of her relationship with her dad, the late Judge Charles M. Stokes, a Republican and Seattle's first Black state legislator.
- In 2004, Oliver completed a year-long consultancy as editor-in-chief of Essence.com. She then was asked to assist in the merger of Essence with Time Inc., serving in the capacity of deputy editor and returning to Essence for the second time. She originally joined the magazine as senior editor of the Lifestyle section. During her 16 years there she rose to the second-in-command position of editor of the magazine.
In 1994, Oliver left Essence to become the founding editor-in-chief of Heart & Soul magazine. During her four years at the helm, the magazine won numerous awards, including a Best New Magazine nomination from FOLIO.
- In 1998, she formed SSO Communications, Inc., a publishing and new-media consulting firm in the New York area, whose clients have included O, The Oprah Magazine, Lifetime, SpaFinder, and New York Women in Communications. In 2000, she became the founding editor-in-chief of NiaOnline, a popular Internet community for Black women, where she served for two years and wrote a monthly Web log for six years.
- As a senior at Howard University, she won Glamour magazine's Top Ten College Student Contest and upon graduation, Oliver began her career at Glamour as beauty and fashion merchandising editor, traveling the country producing retail-store promotions.
- In her current position serving the 690,000 readers of the Daily Word, Stephanie Stokes Oliver lives near Unity Village in Missouri, and in Anguilla, British West Indies, where she and her husband have co-founded the Ultimacy Villa, a "vocation vacation" destination for writers, readers, and thinkers.
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