James Allyn

James Allyn is a professional survivor of the ‘strategic reset,’ a man who has spent seven decades treating existence as a high-stakes scavenger hunt rather than a career path. From the vibration-heavy gondola of the Goodyear Blimp to the resin-clouded shipyards of Modena, Italy, James has consistently proven that the most important thing anyone can ever design is their own exit strategy.

A connoisseur of the ‘glorious, stupid thing,’ James has chased the sublime and the absurd in equal measure. He has stood at the crossroads of history — lighting the ‘beige monolith’ of the first Macintosh for Steve Jobs and witnessing the birth of cinematic legends — only to realize that the most enduring stories are found in the scuffs and dents of the journey.

After surviving the seismic ‘tantrum’ of the 1989 earthquake, the ‘biblical baptism’ of the yacht racing world, and the ‘paprika-colored’ chaos of the restaurant business, James has found his truthful ending. He lives on a farm in the foothills of North San Diego County, surrounded by the rhythmic crunch of grazing horses and the ghosts of the many lives he was foolish enough to live.