Shayne Watson is an award-winning architectural historian based in the San Francisco Bay Area and an ardent advocate for the preservation of LGBTQ historic sites. She began specializing in LGBTQ heritage preservation with the completion of her graduate thesis for the University of Southern California in 2009, which developed a preservation plan for San Francisco’s post-Prohibition lesbian community in North Beach. In 2013, Ms. Watson, along with public historian Donna Graves, was awarded a grant from the City of San Francisco to author the Citywide Historic Context Statement for LGBTQ History in San Francisco. Completed in 2016, the report is the most comprehensive research yet conducted on LGBTQ historic sites in the United States. She is a member of a number of important LGBTQ groups, such as the Rainbow Heritage Network and has presented on LGBTQ heritage preservation at conferences and panels numerous times. She lives in Mill Valley, CA with her wife and two cats.