Niki Allen is Chief Information Technology & Operations Officer and Vice President of Infrastructure & Operations for Boeing Information Technology & Data Analytics. She is responsible for the global information technology strategy, infrastructure, and operations in this role. Allen is also responsible for delivering workplace technology solutions to nearly 200,000 employees and partners across 70 countries.
Before this role, she spent a year in retail as the divisional Chief Information Officer and Senior Vice President of Technology with the Kohls Corporation. She led the architectural design, application development, deployment, integration, and reliability engineering for enterprise marketing and merchandising technologies during this time. Allen also managed the Enterprise Data & Analytics capability, including the data strategy, data platform, and data visualization software.
Before her pivot to retail, Allen dedicated nearly 20 years to leading IT and product management with Boeing. Notably, she led the digital technology transformation to modernize the end-to-end digital experience and enabled the digital thread across the entire product lifecycle. In addition, she created the first product-centric environments within IT, delivering agile software development at scale for the company. Since the beginning of her Boeing career in 2001, she has served as a technical program leader across several marquee programs and customer segments, including the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Federal intelligence agencies, and foreign military defense ministries.
As a servant leader, Allen serves as an Executive Advisory Board Member at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where she helped launch an advanced analytics degree specialization as part of the SIUC College of Business. She is also a member of the INROADS Board of Directors, an organization that creates pathways to careers for ethnically diverse high school and college students across the country—aimed at developing young professionals for career placement and advancement. She is a strong promoter of diversity and inclusion. She actively participates in several technical organizations such as the National Society of Black Engineers, Women of Color in Technology, and Grace Hopper. Her work in STEM and community outreach involves the development and recruitment sponsorships for hundreds of students of color in STEM annually. In 2021, her contributions were nationally recognized by Blacks in Technology, Inc., including her in their Top 100 in Technology list. Allen is also a member of the Executive Leadership Council, where she also serves as a member of the IT Advisory Committee.
Allen earned an Executive Master of Business Administration from Georgetown University and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Southern Illinois University.