I came from an academic research background, and a lot of the work I did there had all kinds of connections to Rust's core ideas (ownership, safe systems programming, etc.) I was very lucky to be on the job market when a position opened up on the Mozilla team, and I've been there ever since.
More interesting, perhaps, is what keeps me here. There's a wonderful spirit around Rust and its community -- the sense that Rust is an enabling technology that can empower people to do things they thought were out of reach. We're always looking for new perspectives on tradeoffs, to "bend the curve" and try to have our cake and eat it too. The excitement and vitality of the community, and the way we make decisions together, makes me happy to come to work every day.
re: RustBridge, it's actually quite active! In the last ~month, I think there have been at least three events, and a teacher training is planned for January. You might keep an eye on https://rustbridge.github.io/