Albina Popov was born near Moscow, and first traveled to the United States with her family when she was four. She learned English (which her parents did not speak) at kindergarten in Northern California. Her family moved back to Russia for five years, then relocated to California when Albina was eleven. She began re-learning English as a sixth grader.

Albina holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley, with a second major in Political Economies of Industrial Societies. She is intrigued by technology and the potential it holds for collaborators to share information and improve workflow. Prior to joining Heart to Heart in January 2010, Albina worked for Maplight.org, an open-source, web-based, non-profit that tracks political campaign contributions and monitors office-holders' voting records. She performed on-line research of public-domain documents pertaining to House and Senate bills, and also helped develop a Los Angeles City Council financial contributions page delineating detailed demographics for each campaign contributor.

Albina was attracted to Heart to Heart as "an internationally-focused organization currently involved in Russia." While transferring our paper archives into electronic form, she is learning much about our history and growth. Albina's work ensures that our communications materials and other documentation are easily accessible. She has also begun to research potential funding sources and learn about grant writing and foundations.

On her first Heart to Heart mission in October 2010, Albina will provide administrative and interpreting support in Rostov-on-Don.

Albina describes her Russian comprehension as fluent and her spoken Russian as near-native. She studied French in high school and Italian in college. {She also took a semester of Esperanto.}