Alena Romanenko was born in 1985 in Minsk (Belarus). After graduating from a linguistic gymnasium at the top of her class with a major in humanities, she spent 6 semesters on a performance scholarship at the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences at the Belarusian State University in Minsk (Belarus), where she majored in social psychology and carried out two annual projects on cross-cultural communication. Pursuing her research interests, which lay at the intersection of psychology and intercultural communication, she went on to continue her degree at the University of Vienna faculty of Psychology (Austria), where she majored in business and organisational psychology, establishing a research focus within the area of Cultural Diversity Management in Organizations with special emphasis on the importance of psychological variables in organizational contexts.
During the course of her studies, Alena completed her internship at the international market research institute YouGovPsychonomics AG in Vienna, and went on to take the project assistant role at vieconsult GmbH, the company which specializes in international organizational consulting. This helped to extend her competence in organizational research and provided invaluable insights into the world of human resource management. Alena graduated from the University of Vienna with a Master's degree, passing the final examinations with honours.