An accidental career in financial services — and why I'm leaning in
My background in financial services was pretty accidental. I was at NYU studying Psychology with a focus in animal behavior when I landed an internship at Credit Suisse for a major data center construction project through a friend. My first job out of college came from someone I met there. Suddenly I was in FinTech (though I don’t think that term existed yet).
Later I made a deliberate shift, channeling the database and software skills I’d been developing into the nonprofit sector. This was pre-kid, when the pay cut wasn’t as daunting. That’s where I fell into Salesforce and carved out a niche building bespoke solutions for non-CRM-standard use cases—exactly the kind nonprofits need to run their programs.
When I re-entered the job market years later, that early financial services background plus nonprofit projects like a loan management system for Root Capital made me stand out to recruiters hunting for Salesforce Solution Architects for financial services. The roles called for complex solutions, which I enjoy, so back to Finance I went.
Now I’m leaning in. I’ve built systems across wealth management, insurance, loan management, and investments. My strength is diving into complexity—seeing how a system ticks and what it needs to keep ticking. In a rocky economy, a clear niche is a strength worth embracing.
Jessie Grenfell
Jessie has spent 20+ years architecting and delivering software for organizations where complexity is the norm — financial services, insurance, nonprofits, and regulated industries where getting it wrong isn't an option. She specializes in the hard problems: unique operational workflows, cross-system integrations, and the kind of compliance requirements (HIPAA, CCPA, SOC 2) that most developers treat as someone else's job.
At Codality, she leads every principal engagement from discovery through delivery — because she's seen what happens when that thread gets cut.