Barbara Everitt Bryant was an American market researcher who became the first woman to head the United States Census Bureau. She made history by breaking the glass ceiling after 200 years of men leading the national head count that is used to determine political representation, beginning with then-Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson in 1790. She directed the bureau from 1989 to 1993 and to date was one of only two women who have ever led the census.

Bryant was born in 1926 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She was the high school valedictorian and studied physics at Cornell University with intentions of becoming a science writer. After graduation, she worked in New York City as an editor for Chemical Engineering magazine. After marrying her husband and getting her children settled in school, she earned a master's degree in journalism and a Doctor of Philosophy in communications from Michigan State University. She then worked in market research at Market Opinion Research until 1989 and served on the Census Advisory Committee from 1980 to 1986.

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Bryant was put in charge of the Census Bureau after President George H.W. Bush's first choice, Alan Heslop, was blocked. She was confirmed for the office in August 1990. Bryant's position leading the federal government's largest statistical agency entailed an overflowing agenda, traveling the country to help promote the census, testifying before Congress to advocate for the bureau, and bearing the brunt of lawsuits that often come after census numbers are released.

The once-a-decade census determines how many congressional seats each state gets and the distribution of federal funding. The results of the 1990 census were particularly alarming to census watchers because of the undercounting of certain populations. Asian Americans, Black people, Latinos, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders were all undercounted at rates higher than for white people.

Bryant led the charge during the contentious debate over how to compensate for undercounts and came down on the controversial side of a statistical method to adjust the census figures. The Secretary of the Commerce Department, which oversees the bureau, ultimately rejected the plan.

Bryant left the Census in 1993 and took a position as a research scientist at the University of Michigan School of Business and as Director of the American Customer Satisfaction Index. She died of natural causes on March 3, 2023, at age 96.