Sisters in charge: innovative women entrepreneurs

Ebony, March, 2002

Today's Black woman is a go-getter. Not only is she running her own business, but she is also following her life's passion. And the numbers bear it out.

The Center for Women's Business Research conservatively estimates that the 365,110 majority-owned, privately-held firms owned by African-American women in the United States generate roughly $14.5 billion in sales.

Among those leading the charge are Californian Janice Bryant Howroyd, who took a $1,500 loan and turned it into a multimillion-dollar employment agency; Deryl McKissack Greene, an architect who took a family tradition and turned it into one of the top firm's on the East Coast; Shirley L. Gross-Moore, a Chicago-area car dealer who built a solid business despite those who said she would fail; Saundra Parks, a New York floral designer who has changed our notions about flowers, texture and color; and Louise Todd, an art publisher and distributor in Atlanta who left corporate America to turn her love of art into a living.

The five women on the following pages represent thousands of Black businesswomen who are letting it shine all over the business world--from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., Chicago to New York and finally down to Atlanta--and they are doing it their way.

Janice Bryant Howroyd ACT*1, Torrance, Calif.

JANICE Bryant Howroyd never saw herself as much of a gambler. But she managed to parlay a $1,500 family loan into one of the most successful female-owned businesses in America.

As the owner and chief executive officer of ACT*1, a personnel servicing company based in Torrance, Calif., that has 75 offices nationwide and projected 2002 revenues of more than $270 million, she has a roster of clients that includes Ford Motors, the Gap, Sempra Energy and Toyota Motor Sales. As an example of the company's effectiveness, since 1997, it has placed approximately 92,000 workers.

ACT*1, which supplies technical and professional staffing, is only one of her diversified business ventures. She also owns a travel agency, a background-check and drug-screening service, and an electronic records maintenance company. Another part of her empire is California National University for Advanced Studies, which focuses on continuous education and offers degrees in business administration and engineering as well as human resources certificates. For all her ventures, she says, the income projections are in excess of $520 million annually.

Being a nationally recognized businesswoman was not even on Bryant Howroyd's radar when she, a painfully shy woman, left her home in Tarboro, N.C., to relax and visit a sister in Los Angeles in 1978. But she enjoyed herself and was convinced to continue extending that trip well beyond her original plans. "I knew I couldn't become an eternal visitor," she recalls. "So I needed to be employed, and my sister's husband gave me a job as his assistant at Billboard magazine. I started out as a temporary worker and they never wanted me to go. They were fascinated that I knew what needed to happen in an office."

Unlike many who have gravitated to Tinsel Town, Bryant Howroyd wasn't using her job as a stepping-stone to success on the screen or stage. She realized that she enjoyed organizing offices and helping people get temporary and permanent jobs at Billboard and other firms. Companies, especially the entertainment-related ones, were impressed that she could send workers who were dependable and not using the assignments as a ladder to Hollywood immortality.

After gaining enough confidence to believe that she could go out on her own, Bryant Howroyd got the $1,500 loan in 1978, a telephone and leased a small space. Then she relied on what she calls "the WOMB method" to secure business. "I call it WOMB because it's `Word Of Mouth, Brother!' That's how I got to know people and develop business relationships."

To compete with other companies, she decided to make her focus getting just the right people for the right businesses. "Back in those days, if it didn't work out, you had to give the money back," she says. "I focus on keeping the humanity in human resources and helping people achieve healthy work opportunities."

Word of mouth helped her expand her connections and business clients for contract labor far beyond the entertainment business. Soon ACT*1 was supplying temporary and full-time workers for manufacturing, pharmaceutical, aerospace, banking, insurance and telecommunications companies.

Bryant Howroyd had an English degree from North Carolina A&T, but she found that her business acumen had more to do with her love for organization than her skills with written words. She attributes those organizational skills to her parents, who, with love and high expectations, successfully ran a home with 11 children.

ACT*1 now has eight members of the Bryant family working in various capacities. They all came aboard long after they had enjoyed success in other corporations around the country, she quickly explains. Her brother Carlton, a vice president of the company who has a financial background and interest in systems designs, helped develop software that allows companies to remove much of the manual processes associated with paying people.