Janice Bryant Howroyd is an entrepreneur, educator, ambassador, businesswoman, author, and mentor. She is founder and chief executive officer of The ActOne Group, the largest privately held, minority-woman-owned personnel company founded in the U.S. Howroyd is most well known as being the first African American woman to build and own a billion dollar company.
Early years
Born September 1, 1952 as Janice Bryant in Tarboro, North Carolina, the fourth of 11 children in her family. As a teen, she was one of the first African American students to desegregate her town's previously segregated high school. Howroyd was educated at North Carolina A&T State University, where she earned a degree in English.
Entrepreneur
In 1976, Howroyd moved to Los Angeles, California, and worked as a temporary secretary for her brother-in-law Tom Noonan at Billboard magazine. While at Billboard, Noonan introduced Howroyd to business executives, celebrities, travel, diversity in the workplace, and decision-making in ways she had not previously been exposed to. Armed with industry experience and knowledge, and with little more than $1,000 Howroyd continued to focus on employment services and launched her own company, The ACT•1 Group, in a small Beverly Hills, California office in 1978, with Tom Noonan as her first client.
Companies
According to Bloomberg L.P., "ActOne Group, Inc. provides employment, workforce management, and procurement solutions to Fortune 500 organizations, local and mid-market companies, and government agencies." ActOne Group companies include AppleOne, All's Well, AT-Tech, ACT-1 Personnel Services, Agile-1, ACT-1Govt, ACheck GLobal, which provide personnel and recruiting services to different industries, and DSSI, which provides document management services.
Howroyd, according to the National Association of Women Business Owners, is "an individual who has had a significant impact on the well-being of her community and who has had the foresight and generosity to recognize that her success is best savored when she pays it forward." Via scholarship funding and personal service, she supports universities, women's support organizations, Minority serving organizations, and is a mentor to others through personal work and media engagements. She is a member of the International Trade Advisory Commission Board, Los Angeles Economic Development Corporate Board, and the Women's Leadership Board of the Kennedy School of Government/Harvard University.
Author
Howroyd has been a contributing writer for publications such as Forbes and HuffPost, has recorded several audiobooks, and written two books.
The Art of Work – How to Make Work, Work for You!
Howroyd released her first book The Art of Work in July of 2009. The book focused on advice for finding and keeping the right job.
Acting Up – Winning in Business and Life Using Down-Home Wisdom
Howroyd released her second book, Acting Up, in 2019. In Acting Up, Howroyd tells more of her personal life story and shares her advice for entrepreneurs. Acting Up met positive reaction by critics and press upon its release from publications such as Fast Company and Black Enterprise. Inc. included the book as one of their “8 Books For Entrepreneurs Who Insist On Doing Things Differently”.
