She graduated from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with a bachelor’s of arts in English and Spanish. After graduating college, Alli was a bilingual teaching assistant for Urbana School District in Urbana, Illinois, and community organizer for Champaign-Urbana Immigration Form. Prior to joining NIJC, she was a Fulbright English teaching assistant in Chiapas, Mexico and worked a migrant shelter with asylum seekers.