Hi, I’m Alisha! I’m a long time fixer and serial tinkerer. I’m an Upstate New York native, but adore New England. I’m a long time summer camp kid and counselor, and even though those days are behind me I think about them often. I taught Nature and Archery to young girls and will bushwhack through a forest without a second thought. I’m a rabid proponent for Odyssey of the Mind, teaching people (kids especially) to think critically, and always find a way to sneak education into the things I do professionally.

I’m also a self proclaimed nerd. I adore fantasy and sci-if. Star Trek Deep Space 9 is in my top 5 shows of all time. I definitely watch more cartoons than the average adult.

Unabashedly Queer and Non-Binary. I use they/them pronouns.

I work by day for an IT Managed Service Provider. Although I work on the Service Desk, I get my mouse and keyboard involved in everything anyone will let me.

I miss spending more of my time with hands in hardware, glued to a microscope and my Hakko. I am especially knowledgeable about Apple products, but if it has a circuit board, I can probably figure something out. Beginning in June of 2022, I also write for iFixit as a Troubleshooting Researcher / Editor.

I started as a secondary education major (with a Biology focus) at SUNY Oneonta, but quickly realized working in institutional education was not for me. After some changes of major, and a school transfer I earned a BA in Russian from Binghamton University. I am VERY out of practice in my linguistic skills. Though I do own more Tolstoy and Dostoevsky than the average person, think Russian Winnie the Pooh (Винни-Пух) is superior to the American version (but only narrowly), and have strong opinions about when and how the Soviet Union went sideways.

Despite being a life long PC user, my expertise is Apple products. I worked at Geek Squad for several years in a Mac-centric college town, where no Mac users were on staff. Enter me. More out of professional necessity than genuine desire.

Additionally it was a pilot store for the Apple Authorized Service Provider program at Best Buy locations. It wasn't long before I was doing the bulk of the iPhone repairs. I still have nightmares about the number of batteries I replaced in 2018.

From there, I landed at my current job, which at the time was servicing MacBooks for a host of universities in our area.

After all this “Authorized” repair, I became increasingly disenfranchised with the way Apple conducts their repair business. I was never a fan to begin with, but seeing the process from the inside is downright infuriating. I often felt hamstrung by the resources Apple gave me, or frustrated by their unwillingness to share the things I had with the public.

After finding Jessa Jones and the iPad Rehab crew through the microsoldering intro here at iFixit, I started getting involved in the board repair community. Learning how to read schematics and piecing together how a board works is one of the most rewarding things I have done in recent memory. Now that I own a microscope, I don’t know how I ever got along without one. That and a good multimeter, changed my repair life.