Charles Allen · 2019 Honoree

When Charles Allen bucked family tradition to attend Washington & Lee in Virginia rather than Auburn University in his native Alabama, he had no idea that decision would change his life, and would lead him to politics in Washington, DC. His sights were set on a medical career. But in his sophomore year a course called “Malcolm and Martin” grabbed his attention. He remembered his grandmother talking about the Montgomery bus boycott, but this was his first academic exposure to the traumatic national events of that era. He found himself fascinated and, for the first time, wrestling with challenging issues and ideas. He ended up combining his biology major with a newly created concentration in “poverty studies.”

Part of that interdisciplinary program was a summer-long internship at a clinic in a low income neighborhood of South Boston that allowed Charles to do everything from taking patient case histories to helping to draw blood samples. By the end of the summer he had decided against medical school. Instead, he got a Master’s in Public Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and then came to Washington for a fellowship with the Health Resources & Services Administration, the primary federal agency for improving access to health care services for the poor. He found Washington fascinating and pretty soon had moved from Mount Pleasant to Capitol Hill.

In 2004 Charles volunteered with the Howard Dean presidential campaign and one night, over beers at the Hawk ‘n Dove on Pennsylvania Avenue, discovered that he and fellow “Deaniac,” as they called themselves, Tommy Wells shared amazingly similar backgrounds. They had grown up in the same suburb of Birmingham (Homewood), had lived just blocks apart, had gone to the same church and had fond memories of the same high school history and civics teacher. A friendship was born and when Wells was a candidate for the Ward 6 seat on the DC Council in 2006, Charles ran his successful campaign and then became his chief of staff. When Tommy decided to run for mayor of DC in 2013, Charles quit his job and ran to succeed him.

Elected in 2014 and then re-elected to the Council in 2018, Charles has pushed for campaign finance reform in the District, promoted school and playground modernizations, and chairs the Judiciary and Public Safety committee. He sees the challenges presented by tremendous growth and change as making this an especially exciting moment in DC history.

Charles is married to Jordi Hutchinson, who shares his commitment to public service. Formerly on the staff of David Catania when he was a Council member, she is now Program Director for Everybody Wins DC, a literacy program. And with their children, Cora Neal and Everett, they enjoy one of Charles’s favorite accomplishments – the Books from Birth program, which every month sends a brand new book to each young child in the city.