Born in Philadelphia in 1985, the year her father completed a doctorate in criminology at the University of Pennsylvania and her mother a master's in information science at St. Joseph's University, Alemika was less than a year old when her family moved back to Nigeria. She has dual citizenship, but thinks of herself as Nigerian first. She returned to the United States in 2008, completed a master's in communications at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, and moved to Media for her job last year.