Kristina Zarlengo has lived in Colorado, Italy, New York City (Brooklyn is her favorite borough), Massachusetts, and California. She has worked as a prep cook, a DJ, an SAT/LSAT instructor, a university English teacher, and a lawyer before coming to Stanford OHS.

At the University of Colorado at Boulder, she graduated with a double-major in Philosophy and English. As a Mellon Fellow at Columbia University, she did her graduate work (M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.) in English and Comparative Literature (Her languages were Italian and French and her dissertation is about the novel, narrative, and propaganda used during the American Atomic Age). At Columbia, she taught composition and various literature survey courses, including courses in the Columbia core curriculum.

She then pursued another of her longtime interests by studying law at the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard Law School. Her focus was on Constitutional Law, particularly on the First Amendment. She practiced law in New York City, chiefly as a copyright-law litigator. She also worked for the government as a Public Defender, an appellate Public Defender, and an Assistant Attorney General.

Animated by her hopes for the education of her two young sons, she has returned to teaching with a sense of both coming home and designing something altogether new.

In her free time, she reads, writes, goes swimming with her family, overwaters her herb garden, operates complex new systems without ever opening a manual, cooks pasta, makes pottery, and rides bad bikes.