Alena often plays characters who seem ordinary at first but are surprisingly complex once you dive deeper. She's the shy nerd who stands up for herself, the wacky teacher who might actually teach you something, the pious innocent who's anything but. Though best known for her work in TV crime dramas, she has also graced international stages performing improv comedy and in plays and musicals - favorite credits include Drama Desk nominated the Ryan Case 1973 and the role of Typhoid Mary in The Trial of Typhoid Mary with Live-In Theater as well as a stint at the Gyeonggi English Village theme park in South Korea where she delighted family audiences as a clumsy witch, a cheerful unicorn, a menacing pirate and everything in between. LA Comedy Festival, the NY Fringe Festival, UCB and the Pit audiences know her from Mother Eve's Secret Garden of Sensual Sisterhood, a musical self-help satire in which she played Rhododendron, a timid woman with low self-esteem who gains confidence and learns to love herself-not without plenty of laughs along the way. A graduate of the University of Michigan with a double major in Theatre and German Language and Literature, she spent her junior year abroad and speaks fluent German. Alena is based in New York City where she lives with her husband and cat Sophie. She is involved in community organizing around issues of racial justice and is a New York City triathlon finisher.