Allen was previously in Starbucks Retail Systems management for 7 years. Notable accomplishments include leading the effort to launch the Starbucks Card (resulting in $2.6B in revenue in 4 years), leading the effort to deploy broadband networking to 3000 stores in 10 months (the largest private DSL network at the time), and saving over $10M annually by negotiating several strategic IT vendor relationships. Allen has held the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification with the Project Management Institute (PMI) since 2006. Prior to Starbucks, Allen worked at Gateway for 6 years as it grew from $800M to $8.8B.

From 2003-2006, Allen served as vice-chairman of the Board of Directors for Page Ahead, a children’s literacy non-profit that has placed 1.7 million new books into the hands of 550,000 at-risk children in Washington State. He also chaired the Board Development Committee. Allen is currently serving Page Ahead as a Board Advisor.

Allen is the author of Technology Acquisition (Addison-Wesley Professional, 2001).

While growing up, Allen played hockey for 17 years and achieved the level of Jr A with the Merritt Centennials and the Sioux City Musketeers.