It's
exciting and inspiring to learn more about the fabulous women who are
"breaking the glass ceiling". Being Black and "in charge"
is a challenge, both with entry and day-to-day performance. Meet Janice
Bryant Howroyd, Act.1 Personnel Services and see how it's done.
Janice
is a 56 year old African American businesswoman and entrepeneur who resides in
Palos Verde, CA. Her net worth is $250 million derived from the business she
founded, Act. 1 Personnel Services and from her investments. ACT-1 Group is the
largest minority woman owned employment agencies in the U.S. Today the company
has offices in 75 cities and its clients include Ford Motor Company, Cingular
Wireless, the GAP, and Sempra Energy, the largest utility in Southern
California.
Born in Tarboro, N. C., she is the fourth of 11 children; her father was a foreman at a dye factory and her mother stayed home to raise the kids. After graduating from college with a bachelor's degree in English, Janice took a job as an assistant at Billboard Magazine and left the magazine to start sher staffing firm Act-1 in 1978 with $967 in savings and $533 in loans from family. She built up her client base via word of mouth and cold calls. Billboard was one of her first clients. Today, the employment services agency generates annual revenues approaching $1 billion. Giving back to the community, Janice donated $10 million to her alma mater, North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University, in 2004 and gave another $10 million to University of Southern California in 2005.
In
2003, Howroyd’s company placed third on the Black
Enterprise magazine list of Top Black-Owned Industrial/Service
Companies in America. In 2005, she received the Spirit of American Enterprise
Presidential Award. Three years later, she was named Entrepreneur of The Year
by the BET cable television network
So,
what can you learn from Janice Bryant Howroyd? I'd say perserverance,
initiative, and creativity.
Janice
demonstrated her willingness to persevere through adversity when she entered
high school at the recently desegregated high school in North Carolina. "On
the first day of class, I listened to my teacher explain why Africans were so
well suited to slavery and how we'd be much poorer as a society if we went any
further with this affirmative action,"
she recalled in an interview with Black Enterprise writer Tamara E.
Holmes. At home that night, she wept and begged her parents to not force her to
return the next day. Her father, she told Holmes, informed her that she had
three choices: he would go to the school and confront the teacher himself, she
could enter the all-black high school across the street, or she could go back.
Howroyd decided to return. That was one of the first steps in deciding her
future.
The entrepreneurial streak in her family stretched back to her grandparents, who ran a makeshift barbeque restaurant out of their home. Janice later said that she learned much about running a business from her parents, who ran the 13-member household with efficiency and discipline. She deployed her business by what she called the WOMB strategy, as she told Ebony: "I call it WOMB because it's 'Word Of Mouth, Brother!'"
She also used her employment services business base to expand her interest, starting a firm that provides background checks and drug screening for employers, a travel agency, and an electronic-records maintenance company. ACT*1's success even led to the establishment of two continuing-education schools that provide corporate training and distance-learning. "Our revenues come from various areas," she explained to Cassandra Hayes in a Black Enterprise interview in 1998. "Many people are determined and have the true grit attitude to run their own businesses, but that is not enough. At a certain point you must design your business and have a long-term plan." Janice says her role models are her mother and Madame C. J. Walker, early twentieth century hair care mogul.
She explained her business credo in an interview with San Diego Business Journal writer Eric Forst. "Never compromise who you are personally to become who you wish to be professionally," she asserted. "That means you only do business with a company you'd send a relative to, and you look to work with companies you can get repeat business from.... One-night stands don't work in personal lives, and they don't work in business either."
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