Alison McReynolds grew up in Lexington, KY where she attended a performing arts school and was exposed to people from all over the world. As a junior in high school, she got the opportunity to spend a month in France with a host family and it ignited her desire to live and work abroad. She went on to study Anthropology and Mathematics at Ball State University in Muncie, IN but it was a semester abroad in England during her junior year that cemented her decision to apply to Peace Corps. She found a kindred spirit in a fellow Sri Lankan student and knew that she had to go live and experience something completely different.

Alison served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mauritania until 2009 at which point she immediately applied for a Peace Corps Response position in Liberia. She served at ZRTTI in Fissebu, Lofa County, Liberia, where she helped start the new library on campus.Since her return to the U.S. in 2010, she has been working at Peace Corps Headquarters, first as a Regional Recruiter in the Mid-Atlantic Regional Office, then as a Recruitment and Placement Specialist with Peace Corps Response. She recently transitioned to the CIO where she works as an IT Specialist. She continues to travel to a different country at least every other year and as many new cities in the U.S. as she can in the years in between. She lives in Maryland.