Jessica Montez

Biography

As the Program Administrator, Jessica runs the daily operations of the Asian American Studies Program, but also works with many others to coordinate events and to keep the program running smoothly!

Jessica completed her master’s degree in Southeast Asian History at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at UW-Madison. Since working for the Asian Am Program, her focus has shifted from Southeast Asian to the Asian American side of her research and is interested in the experiences of Vietnam War era immigrants and children of immigrants.

Jessica Montez is a Midwesterner through and through. Though a transplant from Chicago to Wisconsin, her paternal grandparents immigrated from Mexico and her mother is from Vietnam. Jessica’s previous career was in biology working with foreign zoonotic and diseases, and later developed therapeutic drugs for human diseases, but after the death of her mother, she was inspired to learn more about her Vietnamese heritage and of her family’s history.