I’m a proud nerd working in tech! I’m a natural empath and relator with a technical background, which means I get to understand how technology works, build it, play with it, and talk to all different kinds of people about it.
I’m incredibly lucky to have fallen into something I love so much. I was the enthusiastic one at school – that hasn’t changed – and, not knowing what I wanted to do with my life, studied Math and Computer Science at university because my brain loves problem solving. Unlike most of my mainly male peers, I’d never coded before and had a horribly steep learning curve to catch up with them, before coming out the other side and becoming a fulltime programmer after I graduated.
A couple of years in, I decided I wanted more interaction with people and joined MuleSoft, a pre-IPO startup, as the first woman in the pre-sales team, not knowing what any of that meant but thinking it sounded like a fun challenge. What followed was another steep learning curve, but one so rewarding at the same time that it really defined my career and the core of my professional identity.
I loved it so much, in fact, that several years later after Mulesoft IPOed and got acquired, I wanted to do the whole thing again and joined another start-up called Kong. At Kong, we power the connected world, with the world’s most widely used API gateway. I’m the Field CTO, and I love my job: I get to use my creativity, empathy, and technical knowledge to bring to life the art of the possible with Kong technology. I tell stories to inspire change and get to learn from and brainstorm with some of the most innovative companies in the world.
Continue reading: https://wearetechwomen.com/inspirational-woman-melissa-van-der-hecht-field-cto-kong/
I’m incredibly lucky to have fallen into something I love so much. I was the enthusiastic one at school – that hasn’t changed – and, not knowing what I wanted to do with my life, studied Math and Computer Science at university because my brain loves problem solving. Unlike most of my mainly male peers, I’d never coded before and had a horribly steep learning curve to catch up with them, before coming out the other side and becoming a fulltime programmer after I graduated.
A couple of years in, I decided I wanted more interaction with people and joined MuleSoft, a pre-IPO startup, as the first woman in the pre-sales team, not knowing what any of that meant but thinking it sounded like a fun challenge. What followed was another steep learning curve, but one so rewarding at the same time that it really defined my career and the core of my professional identity.
I loved it so much, in fact, that several years later after Mulesoft IPOed and got acquired, I wanted to do the whole thing again and joined another start-up called Kong. At Kong, we power the connected world, with the world’s most widely used API gateway. I’m the Field CTO, and I love my job: I get to use my creativity, empathy, and technical knowledge to bring to life the art of the possible with Kong technology. I tell stories to inspire change and get to learn from and brainstorm with some of the most innovative companies in the world.
Continue reading: https://wearetechwomen.com/inspirational-woman-melissa-van-der-hecht-field-cto-kong/
