Heather has been in the software industry for over twenty years. After graduating from the College of William and Mary with a BA in history, she got a job in publishing just as “electronic publishing” started to take over that industry, inspiring her career change to software. She started as a software tester for a stock trading startup with no previous experience in either software development or the stock market. Since then she has survived the first dot-com bust, worked for web shopping companies, online auctions, medical software companies, and defense contractors in various capacities including QA, CM, build automation and release management. In 2013, she attended a Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner at Zendesk and submitted her resume that evening. Now she’s a VP of Engineering at Zendesk.