Allen is a Shreveport-based educator, trainer, designer, and all-around creative thinker with over 25 years of combined professional and teaching experience.
As an Associate Professor in the LSU Shreveport Digital Arts Program, he teaches a number of design courses to include website design/development as well as interactive and game design. He is also the founder of the IdeaSpace, a new on-campus facility dedicated to teaching others to become innovative thinkers and creative problem solvers. He is currently the Education Chair and a past president of the American Advertising Federation (AAF) of Shreveport-Bossier. He serves on the Adobe Education Leader advisory board, is an active member of IDEO’s Community of Practice, and has served on the AAF’s National Education Executive Committee.
In his career, he has received national recognition and several national awards, as well as multiple ADDY advertising awards, for his designs. He also holds multiple industry-level Adobe certifications and is a past recipient of AAF District 10’s Outstanding Educator of the Year award.
Allen holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in design from Louisiana Tech University, master’s degrees in both education and design from Northwestern State University, a bachelor’s degree in design from LSUS, and has attended the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school) at Stanford University.