Debbie Heath joined Rice University in 2013. In her current role, she implements and leads the business operations and project management for more than 27 continuing education and summer learning programs that focus on workforce development and building science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) knowledge and skills for K-12 students, educators, and undergraduate students. Her leadership and dedication to STEM education at Rice has impacted 43 school districts, 34,000 students, and approximately 300 educators throughout the Greater Houston area. Heath provides multi-level support for the executive team and teaching staff, and manages industry and community engagement activities with the overarching goal of enhancing STEM education and access thereof, while expanding the impacts of Rice University's research.

Prior to joining R-STEM, Heath led marketing and events for the Rice Ken Kennedy Institute, an interdisciplinary catalyst that fosters collaborative innovations to solve critical global challenges that advance computing and harness data. In this role, Heath led the institute's social media, events management, and marketing efforts for the annual Rice Oil and Gas High-Performance Computing Conference (now the Energy HPC Conference), Rice Data Science Conference, monthly faculty member luncheons, distinguished guest speaker events, and technology training for machine learning, high-performance computing, and scientific programming boot camps. She worked in the oil and gas industry for seven years as a tax information systems analyst for a major energy, commodities, and services company; she also served as the associate editor for ExxonMobil Today and managed contributions and community relations for ExxonMobil's public affairs department.