National Football Foundation

A co-captain of the 1966 Bowdoin College (Maine) team, Thomas Allen compiled a 91.08 GPA while starring as a safety and punter for the Polar Bears. The English major was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and he served as senior class president. Allen was a three-time Dean’s List selection and a James Bowdoin Scholar. He won the Goodwin French Prize and the Hormell Cup, given annually to the outstanding freshman scholar-athlete at Bowdoin. Allen won the James Bowdoin Cup in 1965 and 1966 as the highest ranking varsity letterman and the Roliston G. Woodbury Award for scholarship and leadership. He also received the Bertram Louis Smith Jr. Prize in English literature in 1966.

Allen won a Rhodes Scholarship to Wadham College at the University of Oxford. When he returned to the U.S., he attended Harvard Law School, and he began practicing as a lawyer in 1974 at Drummond, Woodsum, Plimpton and MacMahon in his hometown of Portland, Maine, where he remained for 19 years.

Allen would enter the field of politics when he became a staff member for Gov. Kenneth M. Curtis and later for Sen. Edmund S. Muskie. He was elected to the city council of Portland in 1989, and he served as the city's mayor from 1991-92 before winning election to the House of Representatives. He held the role of First Congressional District representative from 1997-2009. Allen’s House committee membership included the Energy and Commerce Committee, the Budget Committee, the Affordable Medicines Task Force and the Oceans Caucus.

In 2009, Allen was named the president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers, the principal trade association of the U.S. book publishing industry, where he served until 2016. His book, Dangerous Convictions: Why Cherished Ideas Can Be a Source of Congressional Gridlock, was released in January 2013. He is now a Board of Trustees Member at the Association of American Publishers.