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2023 Hellinger Award Winner- Deandre Allen
The 63rd annual Mark Hellinger Award was presented to Deandre Allen.
Deandre Allen, better known as Dre, is a New York City native from Queens. He graduated from St. Bonaventure in May of 2023 with a Bachelor of Arts in strategic communication and a minor in marketing.
At St. Bonaventure, Allen did some of his best work for the American Advertising Federation (AAF). He worked as an art director his junior year and was part of the pitch team for the National Student Advertising Competition (NSAC), where he and his peers pitched a campaign for the Meta Quest 2 VR headset.
In his senior year, he became the president of Kwerkwerks, St. Bonaventure’s student-run advertising agency. He and his team returned to the NSAC to pitch a campaign for Indeed. The team won first place in their district, the first time that a Bonaventure team has captured that honor.
Every year at the beginning of AAF, Professor Mike Jones-Kelley, the club’s adviser, asks his students if they want to focus on winning the competition or putting forth the best work they can possibly do. Allen’s proudest accomplishment is that he and his team were the first of MJK’s students to do both.
Allen's favorite experience during his time at St. Bonaventure was studying abroad for six weeks at Oxford University the summer of 2022, heading into his senior year. He had the opportunity to learn from an expert scientist who helped create the AstraZeneca vaccine (the second most used COVID vaccine in the world), attend several high-class etiquette dinners, and travel across Europe to amazing capital cities such as London, Brussels, and Amsterdam.
During February of his senior year, he was selected as one of 50 individuals to participate in the American Advertising Federation’s Most Promising Multicultural Student Program. This program allowed him to travel to New York City, where he toured some of the world’s best advertising agencies and holding companies. He participated in several professional workshops, networked with numerous members of the advertising industry, and pitched another campaign for the Meta Quest 2 VR headset to a panel of judges with representatives from both Meta and Dentsu, the holding company responsible for Meta’s advertising.
The best part of this experience for Allen was having his image displayed on an electronic billboard in Times Square, highlighting his and his peers' accomplishments.
In addition to the Hellinger award, Allen earned the Mosser Award for excellence in the strategic communication curriculum, was an honorable mention for the 2023 Ideal Bonaventure Student award, and was inducted into Chi Alpha Epsilon, the Higher Education Opportunity Program honor society.