Howard continued her studies and received an MFA degree in 1985 from the Fiberworks Center from the Textile Arts at John F. Kennedy University that was located in Orinda, California.

[19] In 1991, Howard received the Adaline Kent Award from the San Francisco Art Institute for her installation Ten Little Children (one got shot and then there were nine), a work representing a cemetery inspired by the Soweto massacre.

In May 2023, Howard was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters by California State University, East Bay[22] In the late 1990s, Howard was selected by Alice Waters to serve as executive director of The Edible Schoolyard, Waters's garden at Martin Luther King Middle School in Berkeley, which offered middle school-aged youth hands-on education in the garden and the kitchen with a focus on sustainable agriculture.

[23] She has worked at Alameda County Juvenile Hall and in various Bay Area jails,[3] and has served as a cultural ambassador to Morocco, where she gave a series of lectures sponsored by the U.S. State Department.

[1][9][24][25] In 2018, Mildred and her mother, Mable Howard, were the focus of a 26-minute documentary titled: Welcome to the Neighborhood, that examined the conditions surrounding an African-American family facing gentrification and a housing crisis that threatens South Berkeley's diversity.

[26] In Sculpture magazine, art historian Peter Selz writes: Over the course of four decades, Mildred Howard has created rich and evocative work, taking common objects of daily life and infusing them with a spark that illuminates the underlying significance and historical weight of cultural forms.

In freestanding sculptures, wall-mounted musings, graphic explorations, and representations of shelter, she has developed a language to address racism, injustice, need, and compassion.

Because she maneuvers so freely within the conceptually soft borders of 'installation' work, people tend to think of her as a sculptor, but she prefers the vaguer, more open term artist.