Kevin Allen

Access Mode — Co-Founder and Board Member
Black Pool Capital Advisors — Managing Partner



Kevin has been involved in building great businesses his entire career. He started his first company right after business school in the bioinformatics space. As CEO and co-founder of New World Science and Technology, Kevin’s company created an algorithm to simulate cellular signal transduction resulting in a patent for the innovative work. After selling that business and a brief stint on Capital Hill as a Business Specialist for the late Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, he spent time as a Vice President in a small investment firm financing infrastructure projects for large municipalities. From there, Kevin moved on to Johnson Controls doing infrastructure projects for Fortune 500 companies and discovered a passion for energy efficiency work. Kevin got back into entrepreneurship as the CEO and cofounder of tekBOA Inc – a start-up focusing on technology solutions in the built environment. tekBOA was sold to a customer in 2015. Following the exit, Kevin become the co-founder at Energy Growth Partners working with private equity sponsors in pursuit of proprietary acquisitions in the building services space. While at EGP, Kevin built a proprietary pipeline of acquisition targets with an aggregate value of over $250M. Seeing an opportunity in the fitness technology market, Kevin founded his next company ROWViGOR, a rowing fitness technology company. After winding down ROWViGOR, Kevin went to material science and technology company Windpact, where Kevin served as the COO. Recently, Kevin co founded Access Mode – a nonprofit company dedicated to supporting BIPOC entrepreneurs where he is Executive Director and Chairman of the Board. Kevin also serves a Managing Director for early stage Venture Fund NCTF Denber which focuses on investing in early stage companies founded by BIPOC entrepreneurs. Kevin has spent time as an Investment Banker and was a cast member of NBC’s “The Apprentice Season II” where he made it to the final four.

He has been asked to speak about his experiences at several events and institutions ranging from Princeton University to NASA. Kevin has a BS from the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton School of Business) where he excelled as a two-time All-League varsity football player; an MBA from the Goizueta School of Business at Emory University where he was a Toigo Finance Fellow; and a JD from the Law School at the University of Chicago. Kevin lives in Colorado with his wife, two teenage sons and their black lab Huey where he is active in a number of volunteer activities ranging from coaching football to mentoring early stage entrepreneurs for a variety of organizations.

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