Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project
Board of Directors
Eleven volunteers serve on the MPPP Board of Directors to plan, implement and oversee all of the MPPP activities as well as manage the Wells Petroglyph Preserve.
Alec Kercsó - President
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Having served just a bit over a year as a MPPP Board member, Alec agreed to accept the office of President. Alec fell in love with the Southwest during a series of National Parks road trips, visiting the Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, Keet Seel and several other archaeological sites. He returned home to California from these trips with new interests in Native American flutes (which he began building in his workshop), and petroglyphs. These interests, in turn, brought him and his
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wife, Sue, to the Wells Petroglyph Preserve for its annual Flute Player Tour in October of 2014. They returned for the tour again in 2015, and in December of that year, sold their house in California and moved to Santa Fe.
Alec’s professional background is as a software developer, starting as a computer games programmer with a well-known game company in the early 80s. A veteran of numerous Silicon Valley startups, he has worked in such diverse industries as logistics, biotech, healthcare, and accounting. He earned a B.A. in linguistics from UC San Diego, and his MBA from Duke University.
Alec has been an avid sailor, backpacker and snowboarder, and loves his new proximity to the Santa Fe Ski Bowl.
Katherine Wells - Vice President
Katherine, long-time Board member and previous President, serves as Vice President of the MPPP Board of Directors. The Founder of the Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project in 1999, she has worked tirelessly over the years to develop the recording program, the educational programs for local children and adults, and to preserve the culture and images of the mesa.
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In 2007 she gave the 156 acres of land that has become known as the Wells Petroglyph Preserve to The Archaeological Conservancy. Her memoir, Life on the Rocks: One Woman’s Adventures in Petroglyph Preservation, was published by the University of New Mexico Press in 2009. Katherine is a mixed-media artist and has provided the Project with extensive graphic design models over the years based on images found on the mesa.
Norman Doggett - Secretary
Norman is a scientist in the Bioscience Division of Los Alamos National Laboratory and has lived in the Española Valley for the past 26 years. His work at LANL has included research for the Human Genome Project, diagnostic assay development for the CDC and DHS, and environmental microbiology projects.
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mission of MPPP. He joined the MPPP Board in 2015 as a Member at Large and accepted position of Secretary in 2016. He has served as co-President of the Española Valley Opera Guild from 2000-2014 and has been a volunteer for the Española Valley Humane Society for many years.
Sue Johnston - Treasurer
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First learning about the Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project from Katherine's memoir, Life on the Rocks: One Woman’s Adventures in Petroglyph Preservation, Sue could hardly wait to visit. And after viewing the petroglyphs, she became totally impressed both with the site and the individuals who work so diligently to protect it.
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Sue's most recent position was on the executive staff of a non-profit in the San Francisco Bay Area serving as its CFO. Prior to that she worked with healthcare and technology related start-up businesses serving in financial, strategic, and management roles. A fifth generation Oklahoman, Sue graduated from Oklahoma State University and received an MBA from Duke University. She loved the Southwest her entire life and finds Mesa Prieta to be a very special place.
Members At Large
Matthew Martinez
Matthew joined the MPPP Board of Directors in 2014 as a Member At Large. He serves as the Deputy Director of MIAC.
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Gretchen Yost
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Gretchen joined the MPPP Board as a Member At Large in 2015 with a special appreciation of the animal petroglyphs on the Wells Petroglyph Preserve. She is a small animal veterinarian who has practiced in the Espanola Valley since 2000 after a career as an electrical engineer in Florida. Currently she works at the Espanola Valley Humane Society, does relief work for local clinics and owns "Angel Paws", a pet home euthanasia service.
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Gretchen's background also includes work with other local nonprofit organizations. She is a volunteer for the Rio Arriba Adult Literacy Program, San Martin de Porres Soup Kitchen and has served as co-president of the Board of the Espanola Valley Opera Guild for the past six years. Her passion is to help make our community better for four-legged, two-legged, and now two dimensional residents.
Gretchen recently became Project Volunteer Coordinator. Her acceptance of this important position raised a huge cheer from the MPPP staff – a lot of the work in our organization falls to our intrepid volunteers, and we hope by having a dedicated coordinator our volunteers will feel useful and truly appreciated.
Jan Martenson
Jan first visited MPPP on a public tour in October 2009 and was immediately entranced. She learned of a need for help with the databases used in the MPPP office and signed on, subsequently helping organize the library, both physically and digitally, logging in visitors, and tracking volunteer hours. She trained as a docent and for the last year has handled the merchandise table at the end of tours.
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She and her husband Russell moved to Taos in 2007 from Bethesda, Maryland, where they were both biomedical researchers at the National Institutes of Health. They enjoy road trips throughout the west, with an emphasis on geology and wildflowers, in addition to travels abroad.
For seven years Jan served on the board of Los Jardineros, the garden club of Taos, performing various functions such as program organizer, corresponding secretary, and website manager. She is currently the president of the Taos Chapter/Native Plant Society of New Mexico and also serves as the chapter representative to the state board of NPSNM.
Pat Roach
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Pat has lived in NM since 2003, having relocated from New York City. She has been a volunteer for many organizations: Rancho de Las Golondrinas, Wheelwright Museum, Interfaith Shelter for the Homeless, various musical groups and of course, Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project!
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Pat began her MPPP career as a recorder, helped with the Summer Youth Intern Program for many years, and eventually became a docent, leading tours of the Wells Petroglyph Preserve. If that is not enough - she also helps with various administrative tasks in the office.
Pat was raised on a farm; she graduated from Ohio State University and Wright State University. She has had several different careers: dental hygienist, politician, teacher, and several different management jobs, primarily in the political world.
Dr. Linda Brown
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Linda joined the Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project as a volunteer recorder in March 2018, and then as a member of the Board of Directors in 2019. As an undergraduate student, her first archaeological project was working in the Mount Taylor region of New Mexico where the love of fieldwork took hold. As a professional anthropological archaeologist for the past 25 years, she has conducted research in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras as well as the American Southwest.
Her attraction to Mesa Prieta is an extension of a longstanding research interest in sacred sites and objects. |
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Her dissertation project focused on the meanings and uses of topographic features in the cultural landscape, understood as animate by contemporary Maya ritual practitioners in the Guatemalan Highlands. Later she continued this collaborative research looking at the pivotal roles played by sacred objects, which include antiquities, in cultural preservation. Currently Brown is the co-PI on an ongoing archaeological project at the Classic Maya site of Say Kah, in northwest Belize, where a main research focus involves interpreting the excavated architectural spaces and artifacts through the lens of how the ancient Maya described these types of features and objects in their hieroglyphic texts.
Candie Borduin
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Candie has been with MPPP for over 18 years, and is responsible for driving our monumental recording effort. Until 2020, she has provided yearly training to our volunteer recording teams and continues to manage their assignments across the many proveniences of Mesa Prieta.
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