Global leader and entrepreneur, Janice Bryant Howroyd, delivers powerful speech at CSUSB

Motivated by her family, and particularly her husband, Janice Bryant Howroyd, businesswoman, educator and one of America’s most successful female entrepreneurs, talked to an audience at Cal State San Bernardino about the importance of gratitude of those around you and the balance needed in one’s life, which she says cannot be done alone.

“Balance isn’t levered by you alone,” Howroyd said on Jan. 30 in the university’s Santos Manuel Student Union. “You got to be thoughtful that somebody else is winning along with you.” 

And one of those people in her life is her husband, Bernie, who may be in the sixth of seven phases of Alzheimer’s disease, but is “very present in her heart and her spirit.”

“My husband, Bernie Howroyd, has loved me well for over 41 years. He has supported everything I’ve ever wanted to do,” she said of her husband.

Howroyd offered life advice and suggestions for success, which can be found in her newest book “Acting Up: Winning in Business and Life Using Down-Home Wisdom.” In particular, she highlighted the importance of practicing gratitude, repeating daily affirmations and creating vision boards.

“What my mind conceives and believes, I achieve,” she firmly said, and then had the whole audience repeat in unison. “If you do not believe you can achieve it, you are reckoning it as illegal to your life. Allow yourself the freedom of your fullest dreams coming true.”

Howroyd also highlighted the fact that you can have it all, but you don’t get it all at once – life does not happen in 30-second soundbites like you see on social media, she said. One must work hard and keep a healthy balance.

“Balance is not 50/50. Balance is reaching your 100,” she said. “And you do that based on some certain principles you employ and the key one amongst them is bringing joy to what you do.”

After her talk, which was moderated by CSUSB alumna Paulette Brown-Hinds, ’90, founder of Voice Media Ventures and the second-generation publisher of The Black Voice News, Howroyd met with audience members for a book signing. The event was sponsored by CSUSB’s Jack H. Brown College of Business and Public Administration.

Howroyd is the founder and chief executive officer of the ActOne Group, a global leader providing customized cutting-edge solutions in the human resources industry. The ActOne Group is a multi-billion-dollar (USD) award-­winning, international Talent and Talent Technology enterprise with multiple divisions that each service unique areas of employment and provide talent management solutions.
 
Howroyd is currently No. 39 on Forbes list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women. In 2014, she was recognized by Black Enterprise as the first black woman to own and operate a billion‐dollar company. She was BET’s first-ever BET Honors Entrepreneur of the Year and has received Black Enterprise’s Business of the Year award. In 2013, she was appointed a USA Ambassador of Energy at the White House.
 
In May 2016 she received a key presidential appointment by President Barack Obama as a member of the President’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. In 2017, Howroyd was appointed to the Federal Communications Commission’s Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment (ACDDE).
 
She is also the author of “The Art of Work.”
 
Howroyd has invested millions of dollars in creating the industry’s most advanced technology and talent platform serving the ever-changing utility, energy and broadband communication space.
 
Her vision, as an industry leader, is fostering connectivity between these sectors giving competitive advantage to clients engaged in cyclical markets. Her understanding of global market demographics and trends has made her a highly sought-after ambassador, speaker and commentator on global business issues.
 
In the hallway of her headquarters hangs a painting inspired by the U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown vs. the Board of Education, which outlawed school segregation, because, she says, “I’m a product of that energy.”
 
Her mantra is “Never compromise who you are personally to become who you wish to be professionally.”