For over two decades, Haelim Choi Allen has served and taught in higher education in both secular and Christian institutions. She has extensive teaching experience in two-dimensional and three-dimensional art disciplines, from freshmen to senior-capstone levels, in addition to Art History and Art Appreciation courses. Being an educator continues to be central to her calling, and she celebrates all of her students, many of whom she keeps in touch with to this day.

Allen is an installation artist and painter working in the colorist tradition. She received the MFA in painting and sculpture from the University of Maryland at College Park. Allen serves as the Foundation Coordinator for the Art and Design Department at Samford University. She has exhibited her work in such places as Washington D.C., New York City, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Austin, Memphis and Jackson, TN, and in her birth country, South Korea. She has also given talks and presentations on visual art, beauty, and sacred art, in addition to studio art practices, in South Korea and in the United States.

She is married to husband Henry, and they have a son, Matthew. Her body of work represents very broad answers to complex questions of identity.