Kevin Howell, 44, is the chairman and chief executive officer for the Anchor Group and GO Caribbean Network. His expertise includes international business, financial management, business strategy development, and analytics.
Howell’s consulting firm has overseen the development and growth of organizations that support post-acute care and home health aide workers, an industry that predominantly employs immigrant, Caribbean, and Black and brown women. His experiences working with sophisticated large corporations have been translated to helping these small and mid-sized corporations with infrastructure and workforce optimization.
Howell is also hosting the first CARESTAR AWARDS 2023 this August, an event to highlight the unsung heroes of the home care industry and push the brand of quality care. Organizations supporting the event include Platinum Partner CABS Health Network & House of D’Marsh, One Brooklyn Health Systems, JASACare, Aetna, Netruc PR, and AZ Billing.
“Everyone sees the nurses, everyone sees the doctors, but a lot of people don’t see the social worker, don’t see the patient navigator, the home care worker,” said Howell. “It’s about understanding that they’re important everyday to make people’s life better.”
Howell was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and moved to St. Andrew parish with his mom, aunt, and siblings. He spoke fondly of the community he grew up in and said he was fortunate enough to get an education. By 1993, he started studying accounting at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. He said accounting and economics came naturally as something he was good at.
He worked at the public accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) in Jamaica, as a senior audit associate from 2001–2003. After completing his MBA in 2005, he joined and eventually became a manager at Ernst & Young in New York. He also worked at Broadridge Financial Solutions as a senior director of business development.
“The Ernst & Young sign, the one in Times Square, 42nd Street—I still remember I was at PWC and I came here for vacation,” said Howell. “I think about that moment, seeing the sign from the bus coming from the Bronx.”
During his time working in New York City, Howell decided to branch off onto an entirely different career path and try his hand at modeling, which he did to some success.
“Coming to the U.S., I guess I found my beauty,” joked Howell about his modeling days. “It wasn’t for me. I wasn’t comfortable with being treated a (certain) way or just being a rack.”
With his creative juices flowing, though, Howell dove into starting the Anchor Strategy Group in 2009 to generate business on his own. He wrote his business plan around his skill set, wrote a finance book, and drew inspiration from two of his students at a solutions center he taught at who were in the home care and occupational therapy fields. His group helps solve issues for agencies and frontline workers, connecting them with much-needed services and doubling down on fair treatment.
Howell said that during the pandemic, he saw the struggles of some home care workers not feeling valued as vital members of the care team for patients and treated as contractors with lower wages. “For me, this was an opportunity,” said Howell. “We’d been seeing the gaps and plotted, in a good way, to get care connected in a way they have never been before.”
Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member and writes about politics for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.