Alena is a tenured Professor of English at Solano College in Fairfield, CA where she is involved in various institutional and student-centered programs, such as the Creative Writing program, Ethnic Studies/Enlightenment Lectures series, serving as Humanities Academic Senator, co-coordinator of the college's Puente Project, past normer for the college's Composition Mastery Exam, participant in the college's Basic Skills Initiative and in the Faculty Reading Series, among other various activities.  Alena is also an adjunct English Professor at various colleges in the San Francisco Bay Area.  She has previously taught at Santa Clara University, Brown University, Rhode Island College, and Bryant University.  She teaches courses in creative writing, literature, composition, ESL/EFL, and basic skills.  In addition to teaching, Alena has volunteered or worked for the Women's Wing of the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institute, the Sawyer School (adult education), the American Friends Service Committee, the National Black Child Development Institute, New Employment for Women, as well as a number of other programs focused on social service and educational advocacy.  She has also taught fourth grade at Mullica Hill Friends School  and tutored students in the Test of English as a Foreign Language and the verbal section of the SAT.  Alena is a member of the National Council of Teachers of English, Associated Writing Programs, Modern Language Association, California Teachers' Association, and the California Community College League.  Since her high school years, Alena has taught, tutored, and mentored young and adult learners. 

Prior to teaching, Alena worked as a Senior Project Analyst and Technical Writer with Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), a Web Production Coordinator at Thomson Publishing, a Web Producer at Headland Digital Media (now known as Pearson Education's Learning Network), and as a Content Reviewer for Kaplan Testing Group where she proofed, designed, and coded for online delivery of state-level, paper-based compulsory tests for K-12 schools in Texas and California.  Her work in the information technology industry began very near the beginning of the internet revolution, particularly the advent of innovations in digitizing academic texts and ancillaries. Her work encompassed managing the production flow of web sites associated with elementary, secondary, and post-secondary textbooks.  Given the dynamic of this time period, Alena was able to participate in both the management/administrative and developer/production roles; thus, her managerial work was hands-on, including tasks ranging from hand-coding HTML and XML or providing quality assurance testing to managing large development and budget schedules requiring both leadership of diverse staff and successful facilitation of client relations. In these roles she interfaced with all levels of Production -- graphic designers, computer engineers, and web developers -- as well as Management, Legal Counsel, and Clients in order to ensure timely delivery of web-based publications that adhered to complex and rigorous technical and academic standards. 

An active publishing creative writer, Alena has won several national and regional awards and fellowships for her work, including Persea Books' inaugural Lexi Rudnitsky Memorial Prize in Poetry (awarded for her first collection of poetry, The Logan Topographies), a Cave Canem Fellowship in Poetry, the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Fellowship in Poetry (top prize), and Brown University's John Hawkes Memorial Prize in Fiction.  She was also a finalist for the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book award and the Rona Jafee Foundation's Writer's Award.  Her work has appeared in over a dozen journals and magazines, most recently including the anthology Angels of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry, Callaloo, ABZ Press, Drunken Boat, and Appalachian Heritage.  Alena has also performed in film, plays, and commercials, including A Raisin in the Sun, Jar the Floor, Better-n-Indins, Unfinished Women Cry While A Bird Dies in a Gilded Cage, as well as the Discovery Channel series Women Pharaohs. 

Current projects include(d) serving as a Master Panelist Reviewer for the 2012 Federal Department of Labor's $500 million dollar grant program "Trade Adjustment Assistance and Community College and Career Training", working as an OpenTextbook Reviewer and Blogger for the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources, and working as a Consultant for the Maximum Achievement Project.

Alena volunteers for the American Red Cross and Volunteers for Peace.

Publication Links

Voice: 510.457.1677
Email: all-write@all-write.net