KaNeesha Allen

Allen is a Houston-based education and nonprofit leader, as well as an emerging voice in mental and behavioral health, with 20+ years of combined experience driving organizational change. Her expertise is rooted in civic engagement leadership, classroom instruction, and crisis intervention across nonprofit, higher education, and K-12 sectors. Currently, she serves as the Community Collaboration Lead for Dalberg Design’s two-year partnership with the Houston Endowment, engaging more than thirty community-based organizations in Houston in a research and co-design process to address challenges and inequities related to the pathway to citizenship for immigrants and refugees. Allen's core expertise includes project management, facilitation, stakeholder engagement, and crisis intervention. As a mother to an autistic teenage son, she brings both personal insight and professional dedication to supporting neurodivergent individuals. Additionally, she excels in building and sustaining impactful partnerships across a wide spectrum of stakeholders, including local, state, and federal agencies, organizational leaders, community advocates, program participants, and students. Allen holds a Bachelors of Arts in Anthropology from the University of Michigan and is currently completing a Masters of Science in Psychology with a specialization in Marriage and Family Therapy from Our Lady of the Lake University. Her professional research interests centers neurodivergent populations, with emphasis on diagnosis, therapeutic interventions, and systemic treatment approaches.