Rounding out the top five on the BE Industrial/Service Companies list is innovative employment agency ACT-1 Group. Despite the current economic downturn, the Torrance, California—based company has reigned as the nation’s largest minority, woman-owned personnel staffing agency with $753 million in 2008 revenues.
In 1978, trailblazing entrepreneur Janice Bryant Howroyd founded ACT-1 with a small investment and single-room office in Beverly Hills. More than 30 years later, she has grown the firm into a multimillion-dollar global human resource services consortium that has provided staffing solutions to top 500 and top 1000 publicly traded companies in industries from entertainment to information technology to fashion to biotech.
Howroyd is also the author of The Art of Work: How to Make Your Work, Work for You.