Economic Development Council Lunch

We are pleased to welcome State Senator Ben Allen as our June speaker.

Senator Allen represents the Westside, Hollywood and South Bay communities of Los Angeles County. He chairs the Senate Environmental Quality Committee and the Joint Committee on the Arts, and serves on the Committees on Natural Resources and Water, Governmental Organization, and Transportation. He also chairs the Select Committee on Aerospace and Defense. He is chair of the Jewish Caucus, and co-chair of the Environmental Caucus. His policy priorities include education, the environment, jobs and the economy, transportation, and political reform.

Ben is a former board member, and board president, of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District. While in law school, he was a voting member of the University of California Board of Regents, and a judicial clerk with the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. An attorney, he worked for the law firms of Richardson & Patel LLP, and Bryan Cave LLP.

Prior to his law career, Ben worked for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, and then as communications director for Congressman Jose Serrano (D-NY). He is a senior fellow with the international human rights organization Humanity in Action, an Aspen Institute-Rodel Fellow, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a graduate of the Jewish Federation's New Leaders Project. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude in History; a Masters degree in Latin American Studies from the University of Cambridge, and a Juris Doctor degree from UC Berkeley.