About Christine D. Allen, Ph.D.

MY SENSIBILITY AND WORK ETHIC

I have invested my entire academic and professional life—the last thirty-seven years—in two endeavors. Foremost, my love for the written word has driven me to excel as a graduate student in English, write an award-winning novel and several award-winning short stories and poems, and generate volumes of carefully curated research; launch and manage a successful editing and writing company for two decades and train more than thirty writers and editors; and teach twenty-five sections of college writing, three sections of creative writing, and several private and classroom learning experiences for English as a second language in Japan and Turkey. Second, an insatiable sense of curiosity has driven me to seek innovative strategies to outperform my prior benchmarks at every turn. Allow me to speak to what that does and does not entail.

For me, a meaningful benchmark doesn’t comprise accumulation of wealth and notoriety. A meaningful benchmark might consist of exploring new bodies of knowledge to open doors to new professional fields, relationships, and applications for professional and personal projects. I consider my life enriched when I learn a new language—and I’m not just talking about languages spoken in a given region abroad. I’m talking about visual languages and the technologies that bolster them and hybrid methodologies in representation that make our world more legible, accessible, and productive. I’m talking about the many fascinating languages of theoretical and physical sciences, about foregrounding phraseologies of civilizations past and present, about the languages of movement and sound, about the vernacular of consciousness and gesture. A meaningful benchmark means working together with other curious minds to consider new ways to learn about, live in, and articulate the world we live in. In my lived experience, consistently surpassing my own best efforts to bring value to others’ lives requires development of increasingly intricate and rewarding ways of tapping into one another’s knowledge and methodologies—and that kind of growth, in short, is what I’m here for. 

These drives—to understand the nuances and power of the written word and to broaden and strengthen my capacities as a professional and as an intellectual—have served me well. Yet the ultimate benchmark, for me, is that my commitment serves the students and writers, the employers and colleagues, and other dear individuals I’ve had the pleasure to assist. There’s nothing more rewarding than the look on someone’s face or the thrill in team communications when you bring out—through facilitation, design, or production—valuable qualities in the others’ ideas, efforts, and identities on a material or virtual page.

MY IDEAL WORK ENVIRONMENT

I work well independently as long as I have opportunities to collaborate with others for a sense of shared purpose and the pleasure of synchronicity. Throughout my career as a writer-editor and instructional designer, I’ve worked at home, in libraries, in classrooms, in local offices, and in offices across the country. I would also be thrilled to work abroad. I’ve always valued the variation in both topical arenas and in working environments, and the people I’ve worked with have symbiotically appreciated my flexibility.

MY IDEAL ROLE AND TIME INVESTMENT 

My flexibility applies not only to work environments, but to professional roles and work schedules. I enjoy both production work and project leadership, and I appreciate both part-time and full-time work for their respective benefits. I would happily commit my daily professional life to supporting a single company or educational institution, but I need not rely on any one entity to fulfill all of my curiosities and ambitions. I can be very resourceful in both nurturing and pruning my life’s endeavors. When I work part-time in production, I also write books—a preoccupation I love very much. When I work full-time as one who delegates tasks or completes delegated tasks, I discover gratifying ways to excel in that company or advance my team’s and my own skillsets. This flexibility emerges as both an aspect of my personality and as a consequence of careful study. While researching management and decision-making models for suites of leadership instructional deliverables, I learned that whatever informed option a person chooses from a set of possible options is less important than the attitude one takes in regard to their sense of agency in the decision-making process and the way they commit to ensuring their choice results in positive outcomes. I take these lessons learned very seriously and personally. When I say I would be happy with whatever role I am given and whatever time commitment is offered to me, I am not foregoing my sense of agency. I am saying that I will undoubtedly make that which is offered to me a gratifying experience by adapting my priorities and proclivities to meet the challenges of the moment and my appetite for achievement.

MY RELATIONSHIP WITH COLLEAGUES, TEAM MANAGERS, AND ADMINISTRATORS 

I thrive when the team, classroom, or audience I’m engaged with values open and respectful communication and a willingness to share ideas and cooperatively develop optimal practices and strategies for best outcomes. That said, I respect the importance of experienced leadership in guiding a diverse  selection of varying specialized talent and sensibilities to achieve common goals. I find that conversations that are tonally negative and functionally nonproductive is distracting to my own work and to team progress. One inspired innovator can enrich the working and learning experiences of an entire group of workers, just as one unfortunate gossip or compulsive nay-sayer can limit the collective possibilities for the group’s success. I also value diversity in backgrounds, physical and mental abilities, and temperaments in the people I work with, because I believe wholeheartedly that a team made up of widely varying perspectives both expands the team’s collective vision for innovative problem-solving and attends to nuanced aspects of a given challenge beyond common knowledge.

MY STRUCTURES FOR REWARD AND COMPENSATION

I meet deadlines. That said, I know I am better suited for projects that demand quality over exceedingly rapid turnover. Certainly I have churned out volumes of work at break-neck speeds, as I’m sure every lifelong writer-editor has had to do. But I feel most rewarded when I’m given projects that require a higher level of research, thoughtfulness, or refinement. Of course, satisfying monetary compensation matters too. If I’m given a routine schedule with a set number of full-time or near-full-time hours during a common workweek, I will be contented with less money. If work arrives sporadically and in a last-minute or off-hours fashion, I would like to make an hourly wage that will afford me the resources to maintain flexibility. I would appreciate monetary acknowledgement for those projects that require more than full-time work in any given week, but I can be more flexible with project-based rates. I also consider the curiosities and challenges of the work their own reward, as I consider myself a lifetime student of a fascinating world.

Recently I completed a doctorate, four months of book research abroad, and a book-length work of creative prose and I am more than eager than ever to return to professional writing and editing, teaching, or publishing, which I put on hold to complete my doctoral studies and dissertation.

MY SENSE OF A FUTURE OF PROMISE

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My broad interests might appear to some as indecisive, but this is far from the case. I like to stay open to unexpected possibilities, but once I commit to a path, decisiveness becomes my greatest strength, in the form of determination to succeed and to bring added value to my clients, colleagues, and students. In each of my endeavors, the world has never failed to excite me and feed me with inspiration.

I have missed the exposure to new ideas, people, and challenges that my career as a writer-editor always afforded me. Please reach out to me regarding any intriguing opportunity you might invite me to take part in and to learn more about my past projects and what specifically I can do for you. 

Sincerely,

Christine D. Allen