Though Oprah Winfrey is the first black woman to have become a self-made millionaire, Janice Bryant Howroyd, CEO of Act-1 Group, is the first Black woman to own a billion dollar company.
The news should come as no surprise, women of color have always been entrepreneurial pioneers.
Madame CJ Walker, the first freeborn person in her family just after the emancipation proclamation, was the first female — of any background — to become a self-made millionaire in the United States.
Founded in 1978, Act-1 now has 2,500 employees and 240 satellite offices in 9 different countries. Act-1 Group provides services to other businesses in deploying talent and finding resource management solutions.
Bryant Howroyd credits much of her success to thinking big.
“No matter what the size of your business, no matter what the generation or iteration of your business, you are in a global business,” she said.
“We all compete globally — no matter what we manufacture, no matter what we deliver as a service or a solution, there is someone else in the world also doing that–and technology has brought us together into a single community.”
According to the 2011 BE Industrial Service list Act-1 is the third largest black-owned company. In 2010, revenue topped $1.4 billion and, thanks Bryant Howroyd's vision, Act-1 on the fast track to becoming a 2 billion dollar company.
Check out Janice Bryant Howroyd's incredible speech as USC's 2010 Entrepreneur of the Year below.
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USC's Entrepreneur of the Year 2010 – Janice Bryant Howroyd (part 1) from Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepren on Vimeo.
