As founder, Chairman and CEO of Allen & Caron Inc, Joseph Allen guides the agency's investor relations and media relations activities. He maintains offices in all three Allen & Caron locations, and works closely with clients of all three offices. He has been instrumental in developing the New York office, which opened in June 1996. He is currently working to build the London office, which opened in September 2002.

Allen maintains a broad acquaintance in the investment community and is primarily responsible for developing the A&C active database that provides detailed information on more than 16,000 portfolio managers and analysts. This information is collected from the media, official sources, and from more than a decade of personal contacts made by A&C personnel, which are recorded in the database electronically. In addition, he works actively with the Media Relations group in the strategic planning of features and media programs.

As a strategist/planner and communicator, Allen has consulted with companies on crisis communications of all kinds, corporate positioning and repositioning, financing, and reorganization. He established A&C's "beauty pageant" capability to help clients locate and choose the right investment bank, and has led numerous road trips in the US and UK/Europe for clients, and assisted those clients pursuing private placements or PIPEs. He developed A&C's warrant conversion program, and has recruited numerous directors for client boards.

In 1981 Allen founded the company in Irvine, California, after spending the previous decade in various areas of media and communications. Initially he was involved in the publishing industry with scholarly and educational book publishers; he then moved on to serve in the cutting-edge public affairs department at Atlantic Richfield Company in the mid-1970s. When he left Atlantic Richfield, he became vice president and general manager of the southern California region of Bozell & Jacobs Public Relations.

Allen has served on the boards of several small companies. He is the author of a college text on system life cycles and books on business communications and continuing education. He has also written a book on sandcastles, and has written on a variety of topics for numerous leading magazines and newspapers, and has been active in several charities.