James Howard is a lecturer, design historian, industrial designer/inventor of some 300 products with 19 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 twenty years at The 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 CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). The New Jersey-based company was one of the longest-running and most profitable minority-owned design firms in the country

James Howard serves as Executive Director of THE BLACK INVENTORS HALL OF FAME, (www.BIHOF.org) a virtual museum), devoted to immortalizing African Americans whose noteworthy inventions have improved lives yet gone unnoticed. Additionally, he owns BIHOF Films. A spin-off of the non-profit that tells the stories of African American inventors through the lens of the camera. James also serves on the Board of Directors for the Unites States Intellectual Property Alliance, and he is presently assisting the National Inventors Hall of Fame to curate their very first Black Inventors exhibit, to be opened to the public in the spring of 2022. For four years James 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, James earned a Master’s and Bachelor of Fine Arts -Industrial Design at the University of Illinois, Urbana, IL. James was recently awarded Honorary member of the National Academy of Inventors.