Heather Lintz started her career in ecology as an undergraduate on exchange in Ecuador for two years. She attended classes in Ecuador and was employed by a non-profit organization, Jatun Sacha, that conserves large parcels of habitat to facilitate research, education, and conservation. She won grant funding for Jatun Sacha on several projects including the construction of the Guandera Biological Station in the Andes of northern Ecuador. After receiving her B.S. in Biology from the University of Oregon in 1997, she co-founded the Walama Restoration Project, a non-profit organization in Eugene, Oregon. Walama is dedicated to strengthening the tie between environmental education and the restoration of endemic habitats.

She enrolled as a Masters student in the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology at Oregon State University (OSU) in 2005. She finished her M.S. studying wetlands of eastern Oregon under Mary Kentula and Mark Wilson. She also finished a Ph.D. from the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology in 2010 working with Bruce McCune. Heather won E.C. Pielou Award at the Annual Meeting for the Ecological Society of America based on her work's contribution to statistical ecology. Heather is now working as an Assistant Professor with the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University. She began her position in January 2011. in Jnauary 2011ng, and playing the drum set.