Alicia Abella

Alicia Abella
Education	Bachelor's degree from New York University; MS, MPhil, PhD from Columbia University
Occupation(s)	Engineer, Technology executive
Years active	–present
Known for	Technology leadership, Promoting diversity in STEM
Spouse	Aleksandar Timcenko

Alicia Abella is a distinguished American engineer known for her influential role in technology leadership and her dedication to promoting diversity within STEM fields. She has been a member of the President's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics and is a recipient of the Columbia University Medal of Excellence. In 2011, she was inducted into the WITI Hall of Fame in recognition of her achievements.

Biography

Abella obtained her bachelor's degree from New York University and completed her MS, MPhil, and PhD studies at Columbia University. She is married to Aleksandar Timcenko, who works in quantitative finance with experience at DE Shaw and Goldman Sachs.

Following her academic pursuits, she began her career at Bell Labs, where she rose to the position of Executive Director for the Innovative Services Research Department and oversaw the Cloud Services research platform. Her research endeavors have focused on creating semantically coherent inputs for dialogue management systems to improve conversational AI technologies. In 2010, Hispanic Business recognized her as one of the top five women of the year due to her significant contributions to technology and community engagement. The following year, she was appointed to the President's Advisory Commission and was honored by President Barack Obama for her efforts in advancing diversity within STEM disciplines. Additionally, Abella has been awarded honors by the Women of Color STEM Conference and the Latinos in Information Sciences and Technology Association.

In 2020, she took on the role of Managing Director at Google, leading Telecom, Media & Entertainment Industry Solutions, where she drives innovation and digital transformation initiatives across these industries.