I got the names mixed up, it was Andrew Koenig not Bjarne.

"My attempts to implement algorithms that work on any sequential structure (both lists and arrays) failed because of the state of Ada compilers at the time."

"In 1987 at Bell Labs Andy Koenig taught me the semantics of C. The abstract machine behind C was a revelation. I also read lots of UNIX and Plan 9 code: Ken Thompson’s and Rob Pike’s programming style certainly influenced STL. In any case, in 1987 C++ was not ready for STL and I had to move on. "

"In 1993, after 5 years working on unrelated projects, I returned to generic programming. Andy Koenig suggested that I write a proposal for including my library into the C++ standard, Bjarne Stroustrup enthusiastically endorsed the proposal and in less than a year STL was accepted into the standard. STL is the result of 20 years of thinking but of less than 2 years of funding."

http://stepanovpapers.com/history%20of%20STL.pdf