As a child, Alison was homeschooled on an off-grid island near the Broughton Archipelago. She went on to complete her Ph.D. in Genome Science and Technology at the University of British Columbia, and is one of fifteen global recipients of the 2022 L'Oreal-UNESCO Women in Science fellowships, awarded for her leadership and research on honey bee fertility. Alison loves science communication and writes articles for Scientific American, the Gairdner foundation, and others when she's not training horses or hiking through a mountain pass