For over 30 years, she has built the capacity and resources of nonprofit organizations focused on advancing economic, racial, and social justice. Bonnie has held a broad range of senior executive roles, including Executive Director and Development Director. She specializes in Change Management, working with leaders, teams, and boards at various stages of organizational life. Whether in the start-up stage, a period of growth, re-imagining, transitioning, or winding down an organization, Bonnie brings an innovative and People-First approach guided by the values of honesty, empathy, teamwork, and the courage to make tough decisions for the greater good.
Highlights of her professional accomplishments include:
As Interim Executive Director at the Center for Arkansas Legal Services, Bonnie is leading the board, staff, and external stakeholders through a nonprofit dissolution process. Founded in 1965, the organization has six offices and a staff of over 50 in central and southern Arkansas, Navigating this transition has required a balancing act of holding together a staff with compassion in the midst of anxiety, grief, and loss while continuing to focus on the mission and client services.
As Executive Director at Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, Bonnie led the staff and board through a process of shifting the mission and structure to both honor its 50-year history and respond to the most pressing current civil rights issues. She built a high-performing senior management team to create a collaborative approach to leadership. She expanded and diversified funding and elevated the organization’s profile. Bonnie also collaborated with board leadership to create a more engaged and diverse board across, race, age, gender, sector, and lived experience.
As Development Director at the Mississippi Center for Justice, Bonnie worked closely with the Executive Director to grow the resources and capacity of a new progressive legal and policy organization in the Deep South. She significantly increased funding from national foundations and law firms to support Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts and to open two additional offices in the Mississippi Delta and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
As President of the Center for Law & Renewal based at the Fetzer Institute, Bonnie convened judges, practicing lawyers, and academics to identify leading trends in the legal field focused on professional identity formation and creating more relational approaches to legal practice and the courts. She successfully transitioned the Center’s work to the University of Maryland School of Law through an initiative that created new curriculum and programs for law students focused on leadership development and innovative approaches to legal ethics and professional responsibility.
Bonnie holds a J.D. from the University of Florida College of Law, a M.T.S. degree from Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary, and a B.A. from Rhodes College. She is a trained facilitator of the Circle of Trust approach developed by the Center for Courage and Renewal, a certified associate coach with Integral Coaching Canada, and she holds an interim executive certification from Third Sector Academy (now Interim Executives Academy).
Bonnie has served on multiple Boards of Directors, and she is a recipient of the 2019 Illinois Human Rights Commission Activism Award. She has published numerous articles in professional journals on topics that include Leadership and Ethics in the Legal Profession, Community Lawyering, Disaster Recovery, and Food Justice.
LinkedIn: Bonnie Allen