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By the time Oprah Winfrey tracked Freston down a second time, he was a free man in Hanoi. Winfrey had met David Zaslav, CEO of Discovery Communications (DISCA), who had paid her a visit in Chicago to pitch a big idea: her own TV network. Zaslav wanted to help her build a platform, as he said that day, "that will impact people for many years after you're not here - it's bigger than you." Immediately, she recalls, "I was thinking of Tom to run it." Though after getting a clear no from him at breakfast, "I thought, I'm not sure I can go back there."
But of course she did. She invited Freston back to Montecito - with his wife, Kathy, this time. Kathy Freston, a bestselling author of self-help books, had been on The Oprah Winfrey Show to promote The One: Finding Soul Mate Love and Making It Last, and Winfrey suspected that Kathy could be her ally in finding a connection with Tom. While Winfrey committed the hostess faux pas of serving meatballs, chicken parmesan, and a spread of other meats for lunch (Kathy is a vegan), Tom was friendly, charming - and noncommittal. "Sounds interesting. Let's keep talking," he told Winfrey.
"Do not get involved with another billionaire media mogul." That's what several friends told Freston. "But, you know, Oprah is anything but a billionaire-owner type," he says, explaining why he's now a consultant to OWN. "I'm trusting my gut." A few things drew him in: OWN's distribution deal, which has Discovery converting one of its existing networks, Discovery Health, to the new Oprah channel. "It's taking beachfront real estate and putting a better house on it," Freston says. OWN, he contends, "is as big an idea now as MTV was then. It's the first network about empowerment and life purpose. A great fit for our economic era."
Freston might have been an easier catch for Winfrey if Bono hadn't wanted a piece of him too. ONE deploys grass-roots advocates and celebrities like George Clooney and Brad Pitt to campaign against global poverty, while Product RED is a co-branding program that invites companies like Apple and American Express to donate a portion of their revenues to fight AIDS in Africa. DATA, a third Bono organization, did policy analysis. For all the PR buzz, DATA and ONE were troubled behind the scenes - poorly staffed, with dysfunctional boards and misunderstandings about strategy. "Tom kind of saved my bacon," says Bono.
A friend since the early days of U2 and MTV, Bono chased Freston with more intensity than Winfrey did. "We ganged up on Tom," says Bono, explaining that he tapped Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, and venture capitalist John Doerr in his recruiting effort. "Steve Jobs called me and said, 'Why don't you run RED?'" recalls Freston. "I told him, 'I don't want to run RED.'"
But as Oprah learned, the guy's a sucker for a higher calling. Freston read voluminous data, traveled to Washington to talk poverty with Condoleezza Rice, studied Bono's organizations, and recommended merging DATA and ONE. He oversaw restaffings and helped recruit new CEOs for ONE and RED. A year ago, after enough arm-twisting, he agreed to chair ONE and join the RED board. If you've noticed the RED promotion in Starbucks (SBUX, Fortune 500), that is Freston's doing. He pitched Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz to try out such a program when they met as directors of DreamWorks Animation (DWA). Says Schultz: "Tom was the catalyst."