Originally from New Jersey, Alex attended Miss Porter's School, an all-girls' boarding school in Connecticut for high school. She spent her junior year abroad in China, where she learned to appreciate long train rides, well-cooked vegetables, and Sichuan peppers.
After graduating from high school, Alex spent a year abroad in a tiny village in former East Germany. Coming from a suburb of New York City, she was pleasantly surprised by her host family's farm-style life. They had their own chickens, rabbits, sheep, and garden for food, and her host father even went hunting for deer and wild boar.
Alex attended Columbia University for her undergraduate career, where she majored in Computer Science. She worked odd jobs to help pay for college, her favorite being at the Apple Store in Grand Central Station. In summer 2011, she interned at Microsoft in Redmond, WA, then moved to Seattle after graduating in 2012 to work there full-time.
At Microsoft, Alex started out as a Program Manager on the Xbox One launch team, working on the Help and Collection apps, game installations, and disc reading. After one year, she wanted more of a technical challenge, so switched to be a Software Engineer. Over three years she worked on Xbox One subscriptions and settings, various Xbox 360 features, backwards compatibility, and numerous data science tasks.
While working at Microsoft, Alex attended University of Washington part-time to earn a Master's degree in Computational Linguistics. She also began volunteering as a Computer Science teaching assistant at a local high school in Seattle. Ready for the next challenge, Alex left Microsoft and moved to Southern California to begin teaching full-time. For two years, she taught Math, Computer Science, and Robotics to middle and high school students.
In Fall 2018, Alex began a PhD program at Harvard University to conduct research and create tools to support sustainability, social justice, and civic engagement. Outside of work, she enjoys hiking, camping, biking, and cooking allergen-friendly food with her partner.