President and CEO, Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation

Bill Allen is the President & Chief Executive Officer of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation and its subsidiary, the World Trade Center Los Angeles. Mr. Allen is also a Vice-Chair of the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley and a member of the Board of Directors of the Weingart Foundation, California Stewardship Network, Regional Economic Association Leaders of California Coalition, Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, Los Angeles Coalition for the Economy and Jobs, Film L.A., Unite L.A., Sister Cities of Los Angeles, and the Fernando Award Foundation. He also serves on the Los Angeles Civic Alliance, the LA Advisory Board for BIOCOM, the Advisory Board for the CSUN Center for Southern California Studies, and the steering committee for the annual California Economic Summit.

As CEO of the LAEDC, Mr. Allen conceived, initiated, and supervised the process of developing LA County’s first-ever consensus-built Strategic Plan for Economic Development and personally moderated the 26 public meetings, which engaged more than 1,000 regional stakeholders from business, labor, government, education, philanthropy, and the community to draft the elements of the plan.

Active in regional economic development for more than twenty years, Mr. Allen was the first CEO of the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley from 1996-2000, and in 2000 was named California’s Civic Entrepreneur of the Year by the California Center for Regional Leadership. In 2010 he was named one of LA’s most admired CEOs by The LA Business Journal, which from 2016 through 2019 also has annually named him as one of the 500 most influential people in Los Angeles. In 2018 he was the recipient of the Fernando Award in recognition of his lifetime of leadership, volunteerism, and civic engagement in the San Fernando Valley.

As President and CEO of the non-profit Economic Alliance, Mr. Allen raised more than five million dollars and assembled an unprecedented public-private partnership involving all the leading cities, colleges, and business organizations in the San Fernando Valley. Under his guidance, the Alliance launched programs to expand international trade, improve local education and workforce development, and develop viable solutions to regional transportation challenges (including three regional transit planning summits in 1997 and 1998, which led to the creation of the highly successful Orange Line in the valley).