1. I’m kind of named after my father. His legal name was Jesús Moya, the same as his father. He emigrated from Mexico to the U.S. in the 1950s in his teens. The pressure to assimilate was strong and the English pronunciation of Jesus with a hard “J” has a different connotation than the name does in Spanish. So my dad changed his name to “Jesse.”
2. While I sincerely enjoy my life in New York, I still think of myself as a Californian. I sometimes say I’m “Bi-Coastal.” I moved to New York ten winters ago, and I fly back to California whenever I can because I miss my family, friends and good tacos (usually in that order). I grew up outside of Los Angeles and also spent about a decade in the San Francisco Bay area going to college and working my first jobs.
3. I’m allergic to the cold, literally. I discovered this when I moved to New York. My skin breaks out into hives when it gets too cold (“cold urticaria”). It’s annoying, but it’s better than other rare conditions, like being allergic to sunlight (“solar urticaria”), water (“aquagenic urticaria”), or human touch (“dermatographia urticaria”).
4. My first job was delivering tortillas. My dad made a living by delivering Mexican products to grocery stores and restaurants in Los Angeles. He had a little van and a little assistant (me). On some weekends and school breaks, I would join him on the route. I never got paid in money for my work, but I was rewarded handsomely with all of the free tacos and burritos I could eat. My dad was friends with most of the cooks at the restaurants, and they were more than happy to feed us.
5. In high school and college, I was a rocker. My best friend and I used to blast our favorite head banging music and go to concerts whenever we could afford it. The tinnitus (ringing) I have in my ears is probably from those days. I’m mostly able to tune it out during the day but can still hear it when things get quiet.
6. I’m a first-generation college student. Both of my older brothers dropped out of high school. My mother actually started going back to college while I was in high school, but I finished my degree before her. It took her ten years to finish, but she did it while raising kids and often working more than one job. My research right now focuses on the types of college environments that promote success for first generation students.
7. I cried at my first protest march. I was a first year student in college. Every Sunday, my school would show movies in the auditorium for students. One Sunday before the feature film, the Latino student organization on campus showed a short documentary highlighting the health struggles of farm workers due to the pesticides used in farming. As the lights went out and the documentary played, some students started yelling, “Go home beaners!” and other racist remarks. The next day, students organized a protest that I took part in. It wasn’t the racist remarks that made me cry but the show of solidarity amongst students and faculty committed to improving conditions on campus that made me emotional.
8. I have “hung out” with a lot of famous people. I’ve had coffee with Tom Hanks, breakfast with Christian Bale, lunch with Kerry Washington, dinner with Cameron Diaz, Kevin Bacon and Diane Feinstein, drinks with Orlando Bloom, gone to the Farmer’s Market with Robert Downey Jr., and watched a movie with Natalie Portman. While none of these people know who I am, it was fun to spot these folks out in the wild. I shared spaces with a lot of celebrities in West Los Angeles while attending UCLA for graduate school.
9. I’m a big sports fan (basketball, football and baseball mostly). The Lakers and the Dodgers are closest to my heart. I grew up on the Showtime Lakers with Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The most exciting game I ever went to was a Laker playoff game when they had Kobe and Shaq. I used to love to play basketball too, but not since the last time I sprained my knee. I had a pretty good jump shot back in the day. Now I just play fantasy football.
10. I went to summer Math Camp (twice) during high school. It was a program at a local college to encourage Latinx and African American students to go into the STEM fields. I enjoyed learning about number theory but I liked playing billiards in the college student center more (geometry skills came in handy). When I went to college, I thought I would be a computer scientist but eventually switched over to education.