Ja'Leah Davis

By Korbin Pate

Now that Oprah is retiring, she’s going to need a replacement, right? Oprah may need to look no further than Stephen F. Austin State University for the next great talk show host. Houston native Ja’Leah Davis has always wanted to be the next Oprah and is pursuing that dream here at SFA.

Houston, Texas played home to Ja’Leah Davis for 18 years. Before SFA, Ja’Leah attended Dulles High School. She then came to Nacogdoches in the fall of 2010. “I’m very friendly and goofy, I have an attitude sometimes, but that’s okay,” Davis said about herself.

Ja’Leah is currently a sophomore and a Radio/Television major. When asked why she chose to pursue broadcasting, Davis said, “Since I was little I wanted to be the next Oprah. I want to start out as a newscast person and then going into my own production and my own show.”

Since coming to school at SFA, Davis has gotten a lot of experience in the radio and television field. “I’ve gotten great experience as far as behind cameras, going to California and Hollywood productions,” she said. With all the experience, she still sees room for improvement. “Being in front of the camera I have to improve the way I talk because I tend to talk real fast.”

Despite only being at SFA for a year, Davis has found many ways to get involved on campus. She is a member of a Christian organization called Women of Virtue, and she currently serves as the Vice President of the National Broadcasting Society. The group went to California last spring for the National Broadcasting Convention and got to see the television world up close.

Davis is also the Secretary of Fashion and Motion here at SFA. Fashion and Motion is a fashion club that does a number of things but is most well known around campus for the fashion show put on every semester. Ja’Leah is an actress and stylist in the shows.

Something most people don’t know about Ja’Leah, according to her, is that she not only speaks English, but she knows sign language as well. She said she just wanted to be different. “I started learning it my freshman year in high school. The high school I was at there was German, French, Spanish and Chinese but everybody did that; not everybody did sign language. I wanted to be different.”

Davis knows what she wants in life and plans to reach her goals no matter what. “I’m very ambitious. I go for what I want,” she said.

After graduating from Stephen F. Austin State University, Davis wants to move to California and get an internship. “Hopefully it [the internship] will be in California and just start my life.”