The company has 75 offices nationwide and projected 2002 revenues of more than $270 million. Howroyd has a royster of clients that includes Ford Motors, the Gap, Sempra Energy and Toyota Motor Sales. ACT1 supplies technical and professional staffing. Janice Bryant Howroyd left Tarboro, NC to visit her sister in Los Angeles in 1978. She enjoyed being there so she stayed. Howroyd's brother in law employed her as an assistant of Billboard magazine. She enjoyed organizing offices and helping people get temporary and permanent jobs at Billboard and other firms. The companies were impressed with her work. Howroyd gained enough confidence and got a $1500 loan, a telephone and leased a small space. She used "the WOMB method", "Word of Mouth Brother". She got to know people this way. The "WOMB method" helped her expand her connections and business clients for contract labor far beyond the entertainment business. Later ACT1 was supplying temporary and full-time workers for manufacturing, pharmaceutical, aerospace, banking, insurance and telecommunication companies. She has an English degree from North Carolina A&T. She realized that her business acumen had more to do with her love for organization than her skills with written words. She thanks those organizational skills to her parents. She has eight members of the Bryant family working in various capacities. Her brother Carlton, a vice president of the company, who helps develop software that allows companies to remove much of the manual process associated with paying people. She has an 18-year old daughter, Katharyn at the University of Southern California and a 17-year-old son, Brett, in high school. They helped their mother get the company off the ground. Howroyd's husband is also an entrepreneur who runs his own company in the L.A. area. She has received numerous business awards and encourages Black young sisters to focus on education. She has been in the business 24 years.
