Valencia College Stories

Looking back, John Allen says one VC professor profoundly changed his life

— by Linda Shrieves

If you went searching for a real-life Horatio Alger, it would be hard to find a better example than John Allen, Valencia College class of 1992.

Today, John Allen is Chief Investment Officer for a Los Angeles-based wealth management firm. But in 1991, he was just another Valencia College student, bartending at night, taking classes during the day, and trying to figure out what he was going to do with his life.

Allen came from a hardscrabble background, but he was searching for opportunity, like many of his classmates.  “I felt a sense of community at Valencia, because of the teachers that I had, because of the proximity, knowing that the students were at Valencia because they were in some kind of life struggle,” says Allen, now 55. “They were trying to make sense of it, of their lives.”

As luck would have it, Allen landed in Jack Chambless’s microeconomics course in fall of 1991.

It was Chambless’s first semester teaching at Valencia, and he quickly took notice of the young man who didn’t seem to take many notes, but listened intently – and aced all the exams.

Allen, who’d been good at math in high school, thought economics might be a good fit for him, and when he arrived in Chambless’s classroom, the pieces of the puzzle seemed to fall into place.

“I would describe myself like most students who enroll at Valencia or any community college. I didn’t really have parents who were coaching me,” he says. “I got lucky that Jack was my first (economics) professor. His enthusiasm, wanting students to learn, demanding accountability from the students, was inspiring. To know that he was just a few years older than me was just inspiring.”

After that semester, Allen signed up for any class Chambless taught -- macroeconomics, intro to business. He also became a regular visitor during Chambless’s office hours, hungry for tips, “nuggets of advice for career or life.”

 

 

Although he may not have realized it at the time, Chambless served as both a professor and a counselor to the 19-year-old Allen. So when Allen told Chambless that he planned to transfer to UCF to study economics, Chambless urged him to aim higher.

“I knew his family resources were tight,” says Chambless, “but I advised him that, while UCF has a good economics program, it did not at that time have the kind of standing he’d need for a good career in economics.”

Instead, Chambless advised him to apply to the University of Virginia and the University of North Carolina, both of which had esteemed economics programs that could take the promising young student where he wanted to go.

Today, Allen credits Chambless with changing his life. “He was an incredibly effective teacher. To this day, I still consider him the best teacher I’ve ever had. He inspired me to want to learn, to be a better person. Jack breathed life into my life and career.”

For his part, Chambless says that Allen is “one of the smartest people I’ve ever known.”

He’s also the most successful student that Chambless ever taught.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Allen’s life could easily have turned out differently.

After his parents divorced in his sophomore year of high school, Allen and his dad moved around the country, as his dad chased work. He went to three different high schools in three years and graduated from high school in Texas. But he’d spent his junior year at Dr. Phillips High School in Orlando, and the area made an impression on him.

“Because of that brief year in Florida, I had an appreciation of the economy. I knew I could go to Valencia and work at the same time,” he says. “So after high school, I moved back to Central Florida, enrolled at Valencia and started working at one of the Disney hotels. Like many students today and then, I was working and going to school.”

Work was always part of John Allen’s calculus. The only way he was going to get ahead and create a secure future for himself, he figured, was by outworking everyone else.

While he spent his days in classrooms at Valencia’s West Campus, he worked at the Buena Vista Palace Hotel near Disney World. There, he started as a doorman and later worked as a barback at the hotel’s Laughing Kookaburra Good Time Bar.  When a bartending position opened up, Allen was interested, but wasn’t sure the manager would hire him.

So he studied. As a barback, he knew that even the fastest bartenders got bogged down by the codes they used to ring up each drink in the cash register. He’d observed the bartenders enough to know that, because every drink or liquor had its own code, ringing up a tab became one of the most time-consuming parts of the job.

With his interview set for the following Monday, “I went home and memorized 800 different three-digit codes for every drink the bar served. I memorized all of them during a weekend,” Allen recalls. “I said I might not be the fastest at pouring drinks, but I’ll be the fastest at the register.”

He got the job – a night- and weekend-job that allowed him to support himself and pay his rent while taking classes at Valencia.

Throughout his college and career, working harder than others became his calling card.

“Going to (University of Virginia) or anywhere, you’ve got to keep sight of what you did at Valencia that made you successful,” he says, advice that he would offer to any Valencia student. “All of your classmates are classmates, but you want to do better than them…I would describe myself as wanting to win at whatever I pour myself into.”

At the University of Virginia (UVA), which bills itself as a “public Ivy League” university, Allen worked and lived alongside students from more privileged backgrounds.

“There was a kid at my dorm who didn’t know how to use a coin-operated washing machine.

He took his laundry home every weekend,” Allen recalls. “Their only job was to study.  They didn’t have to work, didn’t have to deal with a broken-down car or life.”

Determined to excel, he took a grueling slate of classes. Deans and faculty noticed. Of the 400 students majoring in economics at UVA that year, Allen was one of only six students who were named to a special, student directed curriculum. Allen used the opportunity to take honors-level classes in other programs. The demanding program consumed his time; he routinely spent 60 to 70 hours a week studying. The other econ majors all dropped out of the program, but Allen stuck with it.

By graduation, that work had paid off. In June 1995, Allen as the only student to graduate with the Distinguished Majors Program and he did so with high distinction, earning a dual degree in economics and finance.

Others might relish that moment, but Allen didn’t even stick around to be honored at the commencement ceremony. Instead, he wanted to get an early jump on his career by moving to New York to start a job as a financial analyst at Stern Stewart & Co.

“Everyone else (at UVA) was starting three months later,” he says. “But I had to go to work.”

The reason? When he enrolled at Virginia, a friend’s father had loaned him the money to pay  UVA’s tuition. After graduation, Allen was determined to pay him back as soon as possible.

“There was a point at which I wasn’t going to be able to go to UVA. I didn’t have any money, maybe $1,000 or $2,000. The father of one of my close friends gave me a loan, which was the only way I could get a loan,” he says.

That man loaned Allen $60,000 to cover the out-of-state tuition and room and board for two years at Virginia. “He took a bet on me,” says Allen, “and he says, to this day, it was the best investment he ever made.”

ALWAYS THE UNDERDOG

In New York, Allen continued to grind, outworking peers.

“I was one of 30 analysts in New York, but I wanted to be the highest ranked analyst,” so he worked late hours, sometimes overnight, catching a few catnaps under his desk in the wee hours.

His persistence and toil paid off. By his third year in New York, he had paid back the $60,000 loan. By his fourth year out of college, he was a vice president at Stern Stewart.

“I always considered myself the underdog, relative to my classmates at UVA and my fellow analysts at Stern Stewart,” says Allen. But he had a singular advantage. He vowed to work harder than anyone – and he never wavered.

“Studying at Valencia and working at the same time, that’s a lot of hours in the week. When I went to New York, I was working 80 to 85 hours a week. You sleep under your desk two nights a week. You sleep for15 minutes. After that, I went to investment banking and worked 105-hour weeks.”

The lesson: “One thing that you can always control in your life is your work ethic. If you outwork others, good things will likely happen.”

That, says Chambless is what makes Allen extremely successful – not just his intelligence, but his willingness to work long hours.

“He had to overcome so many financial and home-based barriers,” says Chambless, who frequently mentions Allen to students in his Valencia classes and included him in a book on labor economics. “It’s a very inspiring story,” he says. “If this guy, who struggled to pay for college, and was sitting in the same seats that my kids are, if he can make it and become a very successful businessman, perhaps they can see themselves in his story.”

VALENCIA SOLIDIFIED HIS FOUNDATION

Today, as the chief investment officer at a Los Angeles wealth-management firm, John Allen is finally slowing down a little – to a mere 55 to 75 hours a week.

So, what is he doing with all this newly-discovered free time? “I’m spending 15 hours a week learning Spanish. I want to keep learning. I want to be bilingual by next year.”

Looking back, he’s incredibly grateful to Valencia College, and especially to Jack Chambless, who spotted his potential and guided him on a path to success.

“Valencia did so much for me. I can honestly and truly say that I wouldn’t be where I am without Valencia and Jack Chambless,” Allen says. “Without that foundation, there’s no way I could have built anything on top of that. I had no foundation.

“If the students view their time at Valencia as building the foundation for what will come next in their education and careers, that’s a really good way to think about it. I would not have gotten on the path, I would not have taken things so seriously. Instead of being a 55-year-old CIO, I might be a 55-year-old bartender.”