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Legacy Award
The Legacy Award recognizes an individual who has had a significant impact on the well-being of her community and who has the foresight and generosity to recognize that her success is best savored when she “pays it forward.” This award honors a woman who, through her leadership and vision is changing lives today, and at the same time impacting generations to come

Janice Bryant Howroyd
President and CEO
ACT•1 Group

While growing up in North Carolina, seeing families in her neighborhood from all different socioeconomic levels, Janice Bryant Howroyd gained an early awareness of how income influences lifetime opportunities, and of how individual workers impact the communities in which they live.

Now, 30-plus years after using a small family loan to establish the ACT•1 Group, today a multi-million-dollar global human resources organization, Howroyd continues to draw on that awareness to create a powerful legacy that supports today’s workers and workforces. For her generosity and stewardship of a future above and beyond herself, including her strong advocacy for women-owned businesses and diversity, Howroyd becomes just the third-ever recipient of NAWBO-LA’s Legacy Award.

“My best accomplishments in business have been the ability to create a solutions-based organization that supports companies in hiring and managing the workforces they need, while making sure that we keep the workers at the center of our universe,” she said. “During this current economy, I am especially proud that our company has stayed true to this discipline, because we’re truly critical to so many people who are in need of work!”

Noting the inherent stress in interviewing for, and in finding a job, she added, “We need to make sure that our sophisticated systems and wide range of clients do not overwhelm our ability to treat each person we speak with as the most important person in our lives, because they are! This is something that I’m very passionate about, and proud of.”

Living the Example That Will Inspire

Howroyd’s passion for helping others manifests itself in myriad ways. She funds scholarship opportunities at several universities to educate future workers; serves on several high-profile Boards of Directors, including the Minority Business Roundtable (as Chair) and the Women’s Leadership Board, Harvard University Kennedy School of Government; and gives her resources, including her time and talent, to many organizations.

She explained, “Hopefully I’m living the example that will inspire, support and create continuing generations of women who participate as fully in a free world as they desire.”

Her example already has inspired two young entrepreneurs who hold a very special place in her heart – her children, who “two years ago shared their career goals with me in a way that explained what my work has meant to them in their decision-making.”

Her daughter Katharyn earned a degree from USC and started the process of establishing her own design business, “telling me that she is confident of her own success because she has grown up with the experience of me treating the challenges of my business as opportunities.”

Howroyd continued, “Our son, within this same timeframe, graduated from USC with a business degree because he naturally decided that he wants to be a part of our business. These decisions made by my children were highly pivotal for me. Not only did they influence the dynamic of how I see myself personally; I know that my business will be multi-generational for my children and for the children of many of our employees.”

Never Compromising Who You Are

Ever enthusiastic about growing her own business while sharing her knowledge and helping others, Howroyd plans to expand the operations of the ACT•1 Group – a $900-million-a-year firm with more than 2,000 full-time employees – to Brazil and Germany in 2009. (The firm already services companies throughout the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, India and the United Kingdom.) And she recently wrote a book titled, The Art of Work – How to Make Your Work, Work for You, which will be available within the year.

With all of her success, she doesn’t ever forget her personal mantra: “Never compromise who you are personally to become who you wish to be professionally.” And she takes to heart advice from her brother, Carlton, about how he approaches golf: “Measure your success not by how much you beat the guy you’re playing, but by how well you beat your own last performance.” As she explained, “I love this approach to business because it allows you to stay on track about the things that really matter and about the things you have the ability and strength to do.”

Her ability to maintain her vision and expert leadership has earned her many, many awards – 2008 BET Honors, Entrepreneur Award; Los Angeles County Commission for Women, Woman of the Year; Spirit of American Enterprise Presidential Award, Inaugural Ball; and several others.

For the woman who’s never lost her awareness of work’s value to our emotional, physical and financial health, add to that the 2009 NAWBO-LA Legacy Award.

“Being honored by the women of NAWBO-LA, whom I phenomenally respect, is tremendous,” said Howroyd, who serves on the Board of Directors of the Enterprise Institute of NAWBO-LA. “[This award] encourages me that I’m making a difference in the most positive individual manner that I can. This luncheon theme is ‘Standing Together,’ and I’m proud and honored to stand with the women of NAWBO-LA as we keep intact the values that we are organized around.”

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