Allen serves as deputy division head for Naval Floor Warfare Heart (NSWC) Corona Division’s Efficiency Evaluation Division, which serves because the unbiased evaluation and evaluation agent throughout a number of warfare areas together with Air Protection, Built-in Air and Missile Protection, Floor, Strike, and, Cyber. The division’s experience is utilized throughout unit stage, multi-ship, and strike group compositions, and she or he ensures every thing runs easily and assists with every day, high-level operations which might be essential to warfighter success and fight functionality.
Allen first started her journey within the engineering area 16 years in the past whereas dwelling in her hometown of Cliffwood, N.J. She attended Rutgers College, the place she mentioned she skilled certainly one of her proudest moments: Graduating with a bachelor’s diploma in Industrial Engineering. Allen recalled this time in her life as a pivotal and defining second on her path to success.
“It’s a really onerous diploma to get,” mentioned Allen. “Once I was in class, engineering was a male-dominated area, and also you didn’t see plenty of black folks in my main, both.”
Even so, Allen joined organizations on the college crammed with different college students who regarded like her, and who had been prospering in engineering. Seeing different African Individuals graduate with an engineering diploma helped gas her objectives and gave her a way of group, she mentioned.
“That gave me motivation, as a result of if they may do it, I may do it,” she mentioned. “I am simply grateful for that group and for the dean, who helped push me by means of throughout instances once I wished to surrender.”
Fortunately, giving up wasn’t part of Allen’s plan. After graduating in 2003, she started her first job at a civil engineering agency, broadening her abilities and experiencing a unique aspect of engineering than what she was accustomed to whereas incomes her diploma.
“Switching from the teachings of commercial engineering to civil engineering was a little bit unusual,” she mentioned. “But it surely was really expertise.”
After a yr wtih the agency, she transferred to the Division of Protection and commenced her journey working for the Army at Picatinny Arsenal. In 2012, Allen was given the chance to relocate to California, the place she joined NSWC Corona, which offers evaluation and evaluation for the Navy, gauges its warfighting functionality, and serves as a frontrunner in NAVSEA knowledge analytics. The command makes use of networked knowledge environments, knowledge and visualization, and measurement expertise to bridge the Navy’s knowledge silos, enabling knowledgeable decision-making for the warfighter.
Cherell Ward-Rucker, techniques analyst for the Acquisition and Readiness Evaluation Division, credited Allen for sustaining a optimistic work environment and serving to her department obtain its objectives from 2019-2021, when Allen managed it.
“She’s at all times motivating the folks round her,” Ward-Rucker mentioned. “Anytime I instructed her I used to be going to do one thing, she tried to assist make it occur. Her encouragement made me really feel like I may accomplish something.”
Allen’s optimistic perspective was developed early in life. She mentioned she was lucky sufficient to develop up in a optimistic family that taught her the significance of getting others in your nook. She thanks her mother and father for instructing her what a robust help system seems to be like and offers them the credit score for shaping her into the profitable individual she is at the moment.
“I used to be blessed to develop up in a two-parent residence,” Allen mentioned. “They’ve at all times been supportive of me. Something I’ve ever wished to do, something I’ve ever wished to attempt. They believed in me and pushed me full steam.”
Allen mentioned her grandfather, a civil rights advocate and the primary black police officer in Roselle, N.J., additionally made a big impact on her upbringing.
“He was at all times on the market combating for African American rights,” she mentioned. “He would at all times inform me, ‘If anybody can do it, Pleasure can!’ To have somebody as completed as him consider in me made all of the distinction.”
When Allen wasn’t round her household, she spent most of her time concerned in her group and attending church occasions.
“The place I grew up, all of the neighbors knew each other, so I had a really robust help system exterior of my residence,” mentioned Allen. “Rising up within the church helped form me as nicely.”
Church gave her non secular perception that she mentioned she practices to this present day in her ministries. She facilitates a girls’s Bible examine group weekly, the place she guides girls on tips on how to deal with life points based mostly on what she’s realized by means of her church research rising up.
With all of the encouragement Allen obtained, she mentioned her focus now’s to encourage others as a lot as she’s been impressed. She believes highlighting one’s accomplishments is an efficient strategy to remind folks the place they began.
“Once we examine peoples’ success tales, whether or not they’re in sports activities, media, engineering, science, or one thing else, there’s normally a again story,” she mentioned. “Understanding these again tales maintain us humble and permits us to really feel that we will succeed, too.”
Allen mentioned she believes Black Historical past Month is an ideal alternative to form the following technology and educate ourselves and others that black historical past is American historical past.
“Racism and bigotry nonetheless exist,” she mentioned. “However we have now the chance to show our kids in a different way and enhance humankind.”
With Allen’s love for management and dedication to public service, she plans to proceed her work in girls’s Bible examine and ultimately enter the Senior Government Service, the place she would have the ability to help in main America’s workforce. By no means forgetting her roots, she hopes bringing her tradition and her experience to different departments will proceed to assist unfold range and inclusion and remind folks in regards to the significance of highlighting accomplishments and constructing others up, regardless of their race.
“I consider Black Historical past Month brings mild to how we have contributed to society, and it actually dispels plenty of myths and stereotypes that individuals have been led to consider,” mentioned Allen. “I’m grateful for the chance to work in a management position for our Navy.”
