Meet the Team – Watsonville is in the Heart

Kathleen “Kat” Cruz Gutierrez is Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She conducts research on modern Philippine history, Southeast Asia, science, and the environment and teaches courses derived from her specializations. She is the author of Unmaking Botany: Science and Vernacular Knowledge in the Colonial Philippines (Duke University Press, March 2025). Kat is co-principal investigator for the Watsonville is in the Heart research initiative. Through WIITH, Kat has expanded her interests to agricultural practices and technology, migration, Ilocos regional history, and the public humanities.

Steve McKay is Professor of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz, the Director of the Center for Labor Studies, and has led three other Community-Initiated Student-Engaged Research (CISER) projects on low-wage labor, affordable housing, and mixed-status immigrant families. His research interests include community-engaged scholarship, labor, migration, race, gender, the Filipino diaspora, and Southeast Asia. Steve is co-principal investigator for the Watsonville is in the Heart research initiative and collects oral history interviews for the project.

Christina Ayson Plank is a scholar, archivist, and curator of Asian and Asian Diasporic art histories. Born in San Jose, California, she is currently based in Washington D.C. She is the Asian Pacific American Collections Specialist at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art. She is the head curator for Watsonville is in the Heart.

Meleia Simon-Reynolds is a postdoctoral researcher in History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research focuses on twentieth-century Filipino migration to the Pajaro Valley, photography, and community archiving. She is the director of WIITH’s Community Digital Archive and educational programs.

Dioscoro “Roy” Recio, Jr. is a native of Watsonville and the son and grandson of early manong. Recio’s extensive network in the Filipino community comes by way of his twenty years of experience as a community advocate in the San Francisco Bay Area. Recio has worked for and collaborated with organizations such as the Manilatown Heritage Foundation, the Bayanihan Center, the International Hotel, and the SIEU-USWW, the baggage handlers’ union at San Francisco International Airport. Recio founded The Tobera Project, a grassroots community organization working to raise the stories of migrant Filipinos of the Central Coast and of Fermin Tobera, the farmworker murdered during the 1930s Watsonville riots. He serves as the Watsonville is in the Heart community leader and advisor.

Our Undergraduate Team:

Janeth Perez-Quirke is a fourth year Education and Latin American & Latino studies major. In 2024-2025, she received a Humanities EXPLORE Fellowship to work for WIITH. She currently leads our communications and education teams. In 2023-2025, she received THI’s undergraduate fellowship to work on educational resource and curriculum design for WIITH and the Sowing Seeds exhibition.

Julie Fintamag is a fourth year history major. In 2024-2025, she received a Humanities EXPLORE Fellowship to work for WIITH. She currently leads our oral history and digital archives teams. In 2023-2024, she received the Building Belonging Fellowship award and Koret Scholarship award to work as a mapping intern on WIITH’s UCHRI funded project to map the the 1930 Watsonville Anti-Filipino Race Riot and Filipino American community-formation in the Pajaro Valley.

Dani Dayao is a fourth year Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) and History of Art and Visual Culture (HAVC) major. In 2024-2025, she received a Humanities EXPLORE Fellowship to work on WIITH’s project to evaluate our community-engaged research methods.

Jamie Florence Dy is a third year Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) and Sociology major. In 2024-2025, she received a Humanities EXPLORE Fellowship to work on WIITH’s project to evaluate our community-engaged research methods.

Former Undergraduate Team Members:

Toby Baylon (2021)

Ian Hunte Doyle (2022-2024)

Ben Goldstein (2023)

Una Lynch (2022-2023)

Jose Maciel (2024)

Amara Marrero (2023)

Eva Mcbride (2022)

Gracie Mendoza (2022)

David Mlynski (2022)

Maia Mislang (2022-2024)

Nick Nasser (2021)

Katrina Mitsuko Pagaduan (2021-2022)

Markus Portacio (2021-2022)

Jacob Press (2023-2024)

Sharan Sethi (2023-2024)

Hana Yamamoto (2022-2023)