Ron Allen:  

I was born and raised in the South, growing up in Georgia and Florida with six sisters and attending college in North Carolina. I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in Political Science, and promptly threw away four years of expensive higher education to take a job as the manager of a clothing store. Applying my hard-earned political skills, I fairly quickly found myself promoted to the position of ¿buyer,¿ a job no one in my family was ever able to understand no matter how many times I tried to explain it. I re-located to the company¿s headquarters in New York City, where for ten years I assured myself that it was only temporary. I eventually moved to southern California, where I now work ¿ yes, as a buyer ¿ for a large footwear retailer. And I complain about all the new people moving to southern California, making traffic worse. While far from exciting on a day-to-day basis, my career has allowed me to travel to places I would probably never have gone otherwise. I was in Hong Kong to see a half-million residents march through the streets in solemn protest of the events unfolding in Tiananmen Square. I took breakfast on my h...Expand for more