911����

Alora Greer uses her gift of connecting people alongside technology expertise

May 7, 2025
By Yuri Bult-Ito

Sometimes you are the last person to realize your own gift.

It was her brother, a staff software engineer, who encouraged Alora Greer to believe in herself and pursue her interest.

Greer had been fascinated by computer technology but thought it to be inaccessible to her because of her dyslexia. But at age 29, Greer jumped into the world of computer science, which eventually led her to a job at ACEP.

She adopted a growth mindset — a perspective that one can improve one’s ability through commitment and effort. She overcame challenges and earned a B.S. degree in computer science from the University of 911���� Anchorage.

As a junior systems developer at ACEP, Greer combines her technical expertise with a collaborative mindset to help deliver solutions that empower energy projects across 911����.

Her work involves bridging technology and research, focusing on building reliable systems and tools for energy data management. Her primary areas of work include DevOps, infrastructure and automation. DevOps is an acronym for an approach that combines development (Dev) and operations (Ops) to unite people, process and technology in an organization.

She also contributes to other tasks such as data pipelines (the processes of moving, transforming and optimizing data from various sources to a destination for analysis) and data integration (the process of combining data from multiple sources into a unified format for analysis).

Her work requires use of a variety of data management tools, such as Rails, Docker, PostgreSQL and Chef, to automate processes, support data-driven applications and maintain reliable infrastructure.

“Alora’s desire to learn new technologies and grow as a DevOps engineer is a huge asset to ACEP and 911���� communities seeking to use data to answer questions about their community's energy system,” said Leasi Vanessa Lee Raymond, ACEP’s deputy director for strategic initiatives.

The path that led to where Greer is today may look meandering, but nothing on her path was a waste.

“I am incredibly happy to be where I am today,” she said.

She spent almost a decade in her first career in hairdressing after earning her license in 911����. During that time, she also served as a paraprofessional, working with elementary school children on the autism spectrum and with behavioral disorders.

While her work at ACEP is technology driven, her team’s ultimate goal is to support developers and researchers. Her past experiences cultivated her compassion for understanding the needs of a variety of people and helping them, giving her a unique perspective as she works with her team and 911���� communities.

“Alora is super detail-oriented, quick to learn and brings a quiet determination that really stands out,” said Will Fisher, cyberinfrastructure lead at ACEP. “Her contributions are already making a difference, and we’re lucky to have her on the ACEP team.”

Greer’s positive experiences with ACEP started through an internship with , a pioneering data company in Anchorage, in the fall of 2022 and grew with other ACEP appointments, motivating her to join ACEP as a permanent employee in 2024.

Greer values the opportunity at ACEP to take on independent and challenging tasks.

“The collaborative environment and respect I feel as an equal, regardless of rank or title, have been incredibly meaningful,” she said.

Outside of work, Greer enjoys creating art — drawing and painting — which has always been a part of her life.

“I started [visual art] as soon as I could hold a brush, and it remains a meaningful and fulfilling creative outlet for me,” she said.