Alexandra received her B.S. in Biology and Psychology from the University of Wisconsin Superior and her M.S. in Biology: Environmental Science from the University of Wisconsin La Crosse. Her research experience has spanned from the lab to the field, including monitoring Great Lakes ballast and beach water quality, surveying the diversity of aquatic macroinvertebrates on woody debris, and determining factors that influence the fate of canopy gaps in Upper Mississippi River System floodplain forests. Prior to joining Samba, she instructed labs and lecture-based biology courses at a state university in Minnesota.