“In 1986, when I was a junior at Harvard College, two classmates and I started a desktop publishing business in our dorm room,” says John Chuang, Aquent’s CEO and co-founder.

“In the early days, our company was not idea-driven but friend-driven,” Chuang explains, “That is, it existed as a vehicle for friends to spend time together. At that stage it was fine (and in fact fun) to try a series of random ideas. Our company, by design, was flexible enough to keep changing until something worked.”

When that desktop publishing company, Laser Designs, morphed into MacTemps, a temp agency focused on placing desktop publishers who knew how to use a Mac, the friends had indeed found something that worked. In fact, that company, which changed its name to Aquent in 1999, grew into a $500 million global staffing firm.

John has been listed in the Boston Business Journal's "40 Under 40" and Transpacific magazine's "Top 10 Under 40" and "100 Great Asian-American Entrepreneurs." In 2002, Over the course of his career he has also been recognized as New England’s “Entrepreneur of the Year” by Ernst and Young, a “High Tech All Star,” by Mass High Tech, and was a finalist for the Harvard Business School Club of New York’s “America’s Entrepreneur Award, 2000.”

John has written op-ed pieces for Inc., the Boston Globe, Harvard Business Review, the Boston Business Journal, and Staffing Industry Report. He has served as president of the Massachusetts Association of Staffing Services and as a board member for the American Staffing Association, AIGA, and the Recycling Advisory Committee for the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts. He currently sits on the board for Angie's List, a consumer advocacy network, and for CareerSoft.

John earned a bachelor's degree cum laude from Harvard College in 1987 and an MBA with honors from Harvard Business School in 1992, while serving as the company’s chief executive officer.