Heather's path in tech

Geertjan Wielenga: What's your background and how did you get into the software industry in the first place?

Heather VanCura: I was interested in software development in college, but I was swayed away from it by my guidance counselor. I majored in business and focused on marketing administration, but I took modules in statistics and quantitative methods. I thought I would get into market research or even something to do with human behavior and observing how people interact.

When I got out of college, though, I knew I wanted to focus on tech. I did my internship at a company called Triad Systems. After that, I got jobs working on high tech accounts in advertising agencies, including Microsoft accounts. Eventually, I decided that I didn't like being in advertising. I wanted to get into the customer side, which is where the more interesting work happens at tech companies.

I found a job at Santa Cruz Operation, in market development, until, in 2000, I saw a job opening at Sun Microsystems, which I thought was really interesting because it involved working on Java.

Geertjan Wielenga: What was the job that you applied for at Sun Microsystems?

Heather VanCura: It was a marketing program manager role for the JCP, which had just started at that point. The program only had 100 members and the Executive Committee had just formed.

The job was to grow the membership, so one of the first things I did was build a different website. I thought we should have annual membership events, so that's how the annual JCP party started. I was also responsible for implementing the elections process.

Geertjan Wielenga: Many people would identify you as an advocate or an evangelist of some kind. Would you agree with that? It sounds like you were the original Java evangelist!

Heather VanCura: Yes, essentially, much of my work involves developer advocacy. Being the chairperson of the JCP is a prestigious role in the Java community. It comes with inherent respect and I definitely am seen as an advocate.

Part of the role is to bring the community into the development of Java, so it's very community-focused. I advocate Java, so, of course, many different topics and questions come to me, including on the health of the overall ecosystem.

I've started to speak on topics such as what types of skills you need to succeed as a developer and what types of projects you should work on to succeed. I often take part in panels, or host interviews at conferences, since I know many people in the community.

I'm also very involved in promoting diversity. Being one of the few women in the industry, which was especially the case back when I started in 2000, I want to see more women attending conferences and women speakers at conferences. For a long time, I was often one of the only women speakers, so I started to get questions about how we could get more women into tech, especially as the Java developer community got a bit older and started having children of their own.

Developers would look around and say, "There's no one like my daughter here at these conferences." They wanted to know how they could make a difference. Over the last five years, that's become more of a common theme. Often, I will give a talk about how we can change that ratio and make a shift in the community.