Alina started her journalism career with United Press International in Rhode Island, then moved on to various newspapers around the country as a staff reporter. She received a fellowship for journalists to study for a year at Yale Law School, culminating in a Master of Studies in Law. She worked as a correspondent in London writing about U.K. universities for the Chronicle of Higher Education.

She wrote the award-winning biweekly column Shortcuts for the New York Times from 2005 to 2015. She also wrote Better by Mistake: The Unexpected Benefits of Being Wrong (Riverhead, 2011) and contributed a chapter to Mistakes I Made at Work: 25 Influential Women Reflect on What They Got Out of Getting It Wrong.