In a ceremony during the 30th annual National Black College Alumni Hall of Fame Weekend, Janice Bryant Howroyd and U.S. Army Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Clara Adams-Ender will enter the hall in the business/industry and lifetime achievement categories, respectively.

Howroyd is the founder and chief executive officer of the ACT-1 Group, a staffing, human resources and management solutions company headquartered in Los Angeles. While she has the distinction of being the first African American woman to own and operate a billion-dollar company, Howroyd is always willing to give of her time, talent and treasure to the university.

“When I first stepped onto N.C. A&T's campus as a Project Upward Bound student, I knew the school was incredible. Young African Americans, and all students on the campus, were encouraged to think out loud - but to think first,” she said.

“These many years later, I continue to treasure the value of this within my personal culture and to benefit professionally and personally from it."

Howroyd is a member of the N.C. A&T Board of Trustees as well as Advisory Council for the School of Business and Economics. She also serves as a member of: the executive committee and the Board of Governors of the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation; the Board of Councilors at the University of Southern California; the Committee of 200; and the Los Angeles Urban League. She is also a past member of the Women’s Leadership Board in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

She has been featured in multiple issues of Black Enterprise magazine, the Huffington Post, on MSNBC and most recently on the Today show.

Before retirement, Adams-Ender served as chief of nursing at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, chief of the Army Nursing Corps and commanding officer of Fort Belvoir. She achieved a number of firsts in a decorated military career that spanned more than 30 years.

She was the first woman in the U.S. Army to receive the Expert Field Medical Badge in 1967, the first African American woman to be promoted to the rank of brigadier general in 1987 and the first Army Nurse Corps officer to be appointed to director of personnel for the Surgeon General of the Army in 1988.

Adams-Ender is currently the executive director of Caring About People With Enthusiasm (CAPE) Legacy Fund Inc., a nonprofit foundation dedicated to raising funds to help students of modest means complete college.

She is a past chairwoman of the university’s Board of Visitors and an avid supporter of education at A&T. She has established two endowed scholarships in honor of her parents and her late husband. Adams-Ender has served in leadership roles as a life member of the Council of Foreign Relations; past chairman for the Board of Directors for Andrews Federal Credit Union; past member for the Board of Medicine, Commonwealth of Virginia; and a charter member for the Board of Visitors, U.S. Marine Corps University.

For more information about the induction ceremony or National Black College Alumni Hall of Fame weekend, visit the website.

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