XAVIER NATION MAGAZINE FEATURE: Where Are They Now?

Taking Care of Business

Jodi Allen has taken the corporate world by storm since her days as an XU tennis player.

If you watch major college sports on TV, you've seen the NCAA ads featuring bright college athletes who aren't big names but have big plans for careers outside their sports.

Jodi Allen, a former scholarship athlete in tennis at Xavier, is emblematic of what those kids are supposed to look like when they're all grown up. Though the 1987 grad was not in such ads herself, she has 67119

moved on from her XU experience to huge success in the business world.

Since October 2017, Allen has been executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Global Holdings, Inc., a car rental company featuring the iconic Hertz brand, along with Dollar and Thrifty. She was lured to the post from Procter & Gamble, where a career of more than 30 years ended with her in charge of P&G's $1.8 billion portfolio of hair care brands, a division with 2,500 employees. And despite her heady climb, you bet she still remembers XU.

"I loved Xavier," she says from her office in Naples, Florida. "I loved everything about Xavier, so I don't even know where to start. I've kept in touch with friends I made, and I learned values and skills which I think have proven very important in the business world."

Global Holdings saw Allen as the executive needed to put more marketing life into Hertz, which reported significant losses for the 2016 year. And in her first quarter, the fourth quarter of 2017, Hertz ended a streak of nine consecutive quarters of decline. She's led the way toward introducing new taglines for Hertz ("We're here to get you there") and Dollar ("We never forget whose dollar it is").

A native of Toledo, Allen earned her bachelor's degree in management information systems. Athletically, she followed the college footprints of her father, Joe Jordan, who was a running back for the Musketeer football program in the late '50s.

"My dad's experience at Xavier was a huge part of it for me," she says.

The other big part was Jim Brockhoff, her coach. A Xavier Athletic Hall of Fame member, Brockhoff served 45 years as men's tennis coach and 34 as women's head coach before retiring in 2007. He died in 2013 at age 78.

"I loved Coach Brockhoff from the very beginning," Allen says. "And we had good teams. Not as good as the ones today, but I remember very clearly as a sophomore beating UC, which I'd say was unusual at that time. I won both my singles matches and my doubles match."

The former Jodi Jordan has been married for 29 years to Chris Allen, a business coach who himself worked at P&G for 24 years. The Allens have one son, Jordan, and three daughters, Kelsey, Madison and Shawn.

Renaissance Man

From law school to coaching to banking and now owning a business, Michael Davenport's unexpected path since his Xavier days.

Michael Davenport was a versatile contributor on the groundbreaking Xavier basketball teams of the late 1980s and early '90s, and he hasn't stopped multitasking since.

"I remember one time looking at my résumé and thinking, 'There's really no rhyme or reason to this,' " Davenport says. "What does come to mind is that I just have done things that seemed like fun."

Today, the 49-year-old Davenport spends a lot more time looking over résumés than sending them. He's among four co-owners of Jireh Metal Products, a major stamping company with two plants near his hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan. He had only minimal experience in manufacturing when he and his partners bought the firm almost four years ago.

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"But it just seemed like a great opportunity," he says, "a solid company that just needed some new attention on the sales side."

Davenport was a standout guard for Pete Gillen–coached Xavier teams for four seasons (1987–1988 through 1990–1991). He majored in psychology at XU, then secured admission to law school at the University of Cincinnati.

Moving through the UC law program in the normal three years was not for him, however. A basketball coaching opportunity beckoned after two years, and he suspended his studies to go to the U.S. Military Academy as an assistant under Dino Gaudio, one of his coaches as a Musketeer.

Then it was back to UC to finish law school. He passed the bar in 1996. Then it was coaching again, for one season (1996–1997) at Xavier under head coach Skip Prosser. The Musketeers went 23–6 (Atlantic 10 champs) and beat Vanderbilt in the NCAA Tournament before losing to UCLA.

Next up was his first job in manufacturing, with the Batesville (Indiana) Casket Company. Following that he did 15 years in Cincinnati as an executive in banking, working in community development and also with the tricky world of federal and state regulations. He worked at U.S. Bank, then Fifth Third Bank, and finally First Financial.

Which all was great, until the chance to go home as a major business owner presented itself.

In basketball, Davenport was an explosive offensive player, particularly from three-point range, and also contributed significantly as a defender and two-year co-captain. His teams won more than three-quarters of their games (97–31), forever removing the "mid-major" tag from the XU program.

Davenport cites his junior season, when XU reached its first NCAA Sweet Sixteen, as the obvious high point of his career. But his more personal highlight dates to his sophomore season opener, when the Musketeers beat fourth-ranked Louisville in an 85–83 thriller in the Preseason NIT at Riverfront Coliseum (now U.S. Bank Arena).

"Louisville was huge, with Denny Crum, and we were known as an up-and-coming program," Davenport recalls. "The stands were half blue and half red, and it was a really cool atmosphere. And I remember thinking, 'This is big-time college basketball.' "

Davenport's wife, Heidy, is also a Xavier grad (1992). They have two sons, Michael and Maxwell. Michael is a sophomore at Miami University in Oxford and is on the football team. Maxwell is a high school senior who plans to play baseball in college.

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