Allen comes to Brown from the City University of New York (CUNY). As a distinguished lecturer and director of the Data and Society Initiative at CUNY’s Macaulay Honors College, Allen has provided students with experiential learning opportunities that also benefit public and nonprofit agency partners in New York. Also the program manager for CUNY’s Mellon-funded Black, Race and Ethnic Studies Collaboration Hub, he brings valuable experience organizing a complex interdisciplinary initiative that engages faculty and students across multiple campuses. Grounded in the work and legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois, he has facilitated Du Bois Data Visualization Workshops at colleges and universities, including Columbia, Fisk, Howard, Spelman and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

In 2025 and 2026, Allen has also taught a course in Brown’s online Data Science: Governance, Policy and Society (DSIO) program, addressing ethical issues related to data access, bias, security and stewardship that are important to CEDEC. 

Allen left a successful corporate career for academia, driven by a commitment to collaborating and expanding communities’ access to data, data skills and data-driven storytelling. His public scholarship includes contributions to Tableau’s Racial Equity Data Hub and Museum Hue’s Mapping Communities. “I’m thoroughly excited to have the opportunity to continue scaling and growing CEDEC,” Allen says. “Data collaboratives are a powerful and imperative tool to solve the complex problems that our society faces. Being able to leverage the resources of the Brown community to help the local community is truly an honor that I don’t take lightly.  It’s my goal for CEDEC’s model to set an example for other cities and communities to draw inspiration from.” 

CEDEC is an initiative of the Swearer Center bringing together partners from across Brown University that share a commitment to public impact research and experiential learning, including the Annenberg Institute, Brown University Library, Center for Computation and Visualization, Data Science Institute, Department of Africana Studies, School of Professional Studies, School of Public Health and Watson School of International and Public Affairs. 

In its first three years, students, faculty and staff have completed almost 200 projects with 68 community partners, who report enhanced capacity to fulfill their mission through new skills and systems to analyze their data, successful fundraising with CEDEC-supported materials and better evidence to inform their programming and policy-related efforts. For participants at Brown, initial projects have also yielded lasting benefits, including collaborative research and publications, as well as fellowships that support longer-term engagement. Representatives from many of the core campus partners in CEDEC served on the search committee and look forward to advancing the next phase of this collaborative effort alongside Allen.

“CEDEC represents a distinctive model for how universities can partner with communities around data, evaluation and research,” said Mary Jo Callan, Stark Executive Director of the Swearer Center for Public Service and Vice President for Community Engagement. “In just a few years, it has responded to community-identified priorities from numerous nonprofit and local and state government partners, mobilizing Brown faculty, staff and students in more than 30 academic programs, building trust, capacity and meaningful shared learning and impact. As we look to CEDEC’s next chapter, we’re excited to welcome Allen. His unique background in community-engaged data work and interdisciplinary leadership makes him exceptionally well-positioned to steward and strengthen this collaborative effort.”