This article is published in the June 2024 issue.

Heather Stephens (Oracle) Joins CRA-Industry Council

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By Helen Wright, Manager, CRA-I

CRA-Industry (CRA-I) is thrilled to share that Heather Stephens (Oracle) is now a member of the CRA-I Council. Heather joins a dynamic group of Council members, led by CRA-I Council Chair Divesh Srivastava (AT&T), who are dedicated to collaborating with the CRA-I Steering Committee. Together, they will steer the direction of future committees, engage with the community, and drive towards the goals of CRA-I.

“Heather is excited about shaping computing curricula in universities to be responsive to evolving trends and the needs of industry, and we look forward to Heather enabling CRA-I to strengthen these bonds between industry and academia,” said Srivastava.

Heather Stephens is a Senior Director at Oracle Corporation. She started her career in physics research at NASA and DOE working on large scale data models and analysis for satellites and environmental research prototypes and devices. She switched over to high tech to advance technology for real world use and be closer to the people that use it. She has spent the bulk of her career working in various startups as well as larger companies like Microsoft on products ranging from language development to IDEs to various Cloud platform/services to Connected Cars. She is actively engaged with the Leadership Institute at her alma mater, Montana State University, to foster innovation and technical leadership by creating an interdisciplinary science and technology extracurricular program. This experience led her to take a role at Oracle to build out a program that supports the education sector in advancing to modern Java. She is learning many things about the challenges educators face and how difficult it is to stay abreast of changes in modern technology. She wants to be a force for good to develop methods for tech and education to stay current, so students are excited about coding and so they have the necessary knowledge to build the next wave of technology that helps the world.

Please help the industry research community by continuing to nominate outstanding colleagues for the CRA-I Council. Read more here and send nominations to industryinfo@cra.org.

Welcome, Heather!