None of this was the plan. All of it worked out perfectly

In my best Brando voice (which is awful), "Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in!"

For more than a decade, my clients were primarily nonprofits. Not the fundraising side, the programmatic side. What nonprofits actually do with the money. Sustainable forestry certifications. A full loan management system where coffee purchase orders served as collateral and repayments were pulled directly from those payments. No two projects were alike, and I loved every weird, mission-driven one of them.

Financial services was never the plan. It started with a college internship on a network cable management team at Credit Suisse — a homie hookup — and the connections I made later put me on construction sites for financial services behemoths around NYC. My heart was never in the industry, so I eventually made a conscious choice (and took the salary cut) to go work for Young People For, which led to me starting Platy IT, my nonprofit-focused consultancy for 13 years.

But I wanted to grow. As a one-woman show, I was limited in the scale and complexity of projects I could take on, so I went back on the market to gain leadership experience and build a network of potential partners.

And was immediately recruited back into financial services.

Years of advanced Salesforce development plus an earlier career in the industry made me a very attractive candidate in that world. So I spent a few years consulting in insurance and then leading a team at a wealth management firm. Interesting work, invaluable leadership experience, and I found unexpected kindred spirits in the architects who are now my cofounders at Codality.

Now my two worlds have fully collided. Clients from both nonprofit and financial services see Codality as a trusted partner, and for the first time in a while, I'm pointing my skills back at the work that lights me up.

None of this was the plan. All of it worked out perfectly.