James Howard
Executive Director, Black Inventors Hall of Fame
James Howard is a lecturer, design historian, and industrial designer/inventor of more than 300 products with over 18 patents. He is currently the owner/operator of Entrepreneurial U, a specialty private career school of Design Thinking. One of his courses, “Bridge” Exploring New Career Pathways, takes students through the problem-solving processes: problem/necessity, solution, and execution, and leads them to new career pathways and job opportunities.
While teaching for more than 20 years at County College of Morris in New Jersey, Professor Howard was an owner/operator of the award-winning firm Howard Design, an industrial design practice, whose clients included Coca-Cola, Colgate Palmolive, Johnson & Johnson, Nabisco, Pfizer, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Howard serves as the Executive Director of Black Inventors Hall of Fame, a virtual museum devoted to immortalizing African Americans whose noteworthy inventions have improved lives, yet have gone unnoticed. Howard also serves on the Board of Directors for the United States Intellectual Property Alliance, and he worked with the National Inventors Hall of Fame to curate the new “Breaking Barriers: Honoring Extraordinary Black Inventors” exhibit located in the USPTO’s headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia.
For four years, Howard has served as a subject matter expert on design thinking for the Keller Innovation Center at Princeton University. He is also a visiting lecturer for the University of Texas Center for Integrated Design. Howard earned a Master’s and Bachelor of Fine Arts-Industrial Design at the University of Illinois, Urbana. He was recently awarded Honorary Member of the National Academy Of Inventors.