The first woman to be director of the Census Bureau, Barbara Bryant was born in April 1926 in Ann Arbor, MI. She earned a B.A. in Physics from Cornell University in 1947, and was art editor for Chemical Engineering magazine before leaving the workforce to start a family. After all of her children had reached school age, she took a job at Oakland University in Michigan. It was at this job that she decided it was necessary for her career to go back to school and earn a higher degree.

Bryant enrolled at Michigan State University, earning her Ph.D. in communications in 1970. From there, she took a job at Market Opinion Research, where she stayed until 1989. That year, she accepted a nomination for director of the Census Bureau, and was appointed by President Bush during a congressional recess. Bryant joined the Census Bureau after almost all of the planning for the 1990 census was already complete, but she lead the actual enumeration and the Census Bureau's response to accusations of an undercount that followed.

Bryant left the Census Bureau in 1993, taking a position at the University of Michigan Business School where she was both a research scientist and director of the American Customer Satisfaction Index. She also participated in the Census Bureau's oral history program.