ABSTRACT First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Journal of Cell Science, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Alaina Willet is first author on ‘ Phosphorylation in the intrinsically disordered region of F-BAR protein Imp2 regulates its contractile ring recruitment’, published in JCS. Alaina is a Research Instructor in the lab of Kathy Gould at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA, investigating the mechanisms regulating contractile ring formation in fission yeast.