How to describe Jill Barancik’s experience in a nutshell?  It’s about producing and storytelling, show development and strategy, corporate leadership, team management and creative problem solving.

Nothing gets Jill going like a good challenge. Create a new cable network’s first Emmy-winning series out of nothing. Shut down Chicago’s Michigan Avenue for two days, teach 20,000 people a surprise flash mob dance, and dazzle a city. Explain Islam to tens of millions of viewers. Design and produce one of the world’s first live interactive webcasts — and watch it get downloaded more than 42 million times.

Three things Jill loves to do:
*Take something really complicated and make it easy to understand.
*Conceive and deliver a message that is moving and memorable.
*Connect to people in the most fundamental and powerful way.

She has worked on a wide variety of projects, from daytime talk shows and streaming shows for Apple to corporate clients like United Airlines. She helps documentary makers clarify their messages and non-profits focus their attention. She has spoken to and advised organizations and clients about storytelling, branding, and communication.

As a longtime and trusted creative advisor to Oprah Winfrey, Jill distinguished herself as one of the founding Executive Vice Presidents and Executive Producers of Harpo Studios. For more than two decades, she dreamed up, developed, managed, and produced more than 600 hours of intelligent, entertaining, and award-winning television programs.

For seven years, she led Oprah’s Book Club, which will surely be one of the cornerstones of Winfrey’s legacy, having reinvigorated the publishing industry and millions upon millions of readers worldwide.

Jill co-created, developed and Executive Produced numerous television series for OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network (Discovery and Harpo Studios joint venture), directing and crafting all aspects of the productions from writing, editing, graphic design and branding, to on-air promotion, publicity, social media, corporate partnerships and integrations, and legal and budget management.

As the founding Executive Producer and co-creator of Super Soul Sunday, Jill has the distinction of leading the show when it earned OWN its first Emmy nomination and its first two Emmy wins. Jill also created, developed, and Executive Produced the Gracie Award-winning sketch and standup specials Wanda Sykes Presents Herlarious, as well as Oprah & Rainn Wilson Present SoulPancake, HelpDesk, and In Deep Shift with Jonas Elrod.

Developed and Executive Produced 4 hit comedy specials under the banner “Wanda Sykes Presents Herlarious” for OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network. Won a Gracie Award for Outstanding Special or Variety Show.

Developed and EP’d Oprah & Rainn Wilson Present SoulPancake for OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network. This delightful hour-long magazine-style show explored the theme of love through many lenses, with moving profiles of extraordinary people, as well as humorous short films.

Developed and EP’d HelpDesk for OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network. This hour-long series featured giants from the Spirituality and Self-Help world, as they offered free advice to everyday people. Hosted by Gotham Chopra, experts included Gotham’s father Deepak, Gary Zukav, Cheryl Strayed, and Rev. Ed Bacon.

Developed and EP’d In Deep Shift with Jonas Elrod for OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network. This hour-long documentary-style series featured stories of people whose lives had been profoundly changed by extraordinary events.

During her years at The Oprah Winfrey Show, Jill supervised and produced more than 500 shows on every topic imaginable, featuring Presidents, Nobel Prize Winners, Pulitzer Prize-winning authors and journalists, sports legends, newsmakers, countless entertainers and Hollywood stars, and most importantly, hundreds of extraordinary everyday people. From long-term investigations like the two-part series with Bill and Melinda Gates on the state of American education, to a year-long national public service initiative to curb mobile phone usage while driving, Jill conceived and led some of the Show’s most significant contributions to the cultural landscape, including a post-9/11 show that was praised by the New York Times.

As well, she led the team that produced Oprah’s first and largest foray into the digital space, the series of ten live weekly webcasts dissecting and discussing the best-selling book A New Earth. To date, the webcasts have been streamed and downloaded more than 42 million times.

Jill began her career at WBBM-TV, the Chicago CBS O&O, where she produced daily news packages, special reports, and award-winning documentaries for legendary news anchor Bill Kurtis.

Jill received her B.A. from Mount Holyoke College and lives in Chicago with her husband Michael O’Briant, an artist.