She received her PhD from the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University in 2016. While attending George Mason University, she served three years as a graduate research assistant in the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy and four years as a research associate in the Center for Advancing Correctional Excellence. She formerly served as a Criminal Intelligence Analyst with the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Labor Racketeering and Fraud Investigations. Alese received her MA in criminal justice from Penn State University in 2009. Her research interests include crime and place, risk-needs-responsivity, experimental and computational criminology, quantitative methods, and human trafficking.