Chrissy Andrews has been drawn to entrepreneurship since childhood. She saw firsthand excitement of building companies from scratch as her father worked with multiple startups. While earning her degree in management and entrepreneurship at the University of Notre Dame, she interned with a small gluten free baking company run out of a home.
“With entrepreneurship, you can really see your impact,” she says. “Getting that exposure [to entrepreneurship], it’s hard to go back to a job where you have to go through six levels of management to get anything done. It’s nice to show up, have an idea, and have it get implemented instead of just having it go into a void.”
After graduating from Notre Dame, Chrissy moved back to DC and gave the federal government a try. Before long, though, she turned her sights back to startups, joining a local ed tech startup. When her former co-worker Ben Hatten approached her in 2016 about a new company he was starting—Dupont Circle Solutions—she had no reservations about jumping right in as the company’s second employee.
Building ‘true partnership’ with clients
In her first few years at DCS, Chrissy spent as much time learning the ropes of Salesforce as she did building the company’s staff and client base. She recalls trying to strike the perfect balance between the “head-down” practical work with Salesforce and the face-to-face interaction of hiring, training, and business development.
One of Chrissy’s more memorable projects involved helping a client implement a new Salesforce tool during the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The client had very complex media needs, and they had a specific Salesforce tool they wanted her team to help them add. But it didn’t take long for Chrissy to realize the tool they had in mind wasn’t going to fully fix their problem. Drawing on both her Salesforce expertise and her long-term relationship with the client, she suggested a different option. The client trusted her assessment and gave her the green light.
“The lens I try to bring to our clients is meeting the need versus over-building and grabbing what’s shiny,” Chrissy says. Her team was able to eventually pass the project over to the client to handle independently. “It was very much a true partnership, and that kind of situation feels really good.”
Over the next few years, as DCS brought on more developers and architects, Chrissy moved away from hands-on Salesforce work and toward people and project management. Now a DCS managing director, she oversees four of DCS’ six portfolios, accounting for a large part of the company’s client base.
“My role has completely changed since the beginning,” she says. “Now I’m supporting teams and clients and thinking through their roadmaps, focusing on the strategic portion of our work.”
Fostering a collaborative consulting environment
Unlike many of her colleagues, Chrissy didn’t work in “big consulting” before joining DCS. Still, she understands why the company’s culture attracts and retains so many exceptional Salesforce professionals from
those firms. First and foremost, she says, DCS cultivates a collaborative spirit. Team members feel confident when they delegate tasks to their colleagues because they trust that the work will be done right.
“Even when something goes wrong, people aren’t screaming at each other. They’re coming together and deciding what the next responsible thing is to do,” she says.
Chrissy also appreciates how DCS prioritizes learning among its staff, particularly when Salesforce announces new or updated products. When a Salesforce release happens, one or more DCS team members will do a deep dive on what’s new and share what they’ve learned.
“It doesn’t do us any good if only one part of the organization knows what’s happening,” Chrissy says. “We share information so everyone knows and can apply that knowledge.”
This knowledge empowers DCS staff to find the right solution to fit the needs of a diverse array of clients. It’s particularly important when the right solution for a client may not be
the “next big thing.” AI, for example, is something clients are always asking DCS staff about these days. But for many clients, Chrissy notes, incremental steps—such as cleaning up their database or adding automation—must be taken to ensure the client can get the most out of AI.
“You need to make [your Salesforce] foundation solid before adding AI or another new thing on top,” she says. “We want to make sure clients aren’t disappointed when they do introduce something like AI, to ensure they’re not spending a lot of money that doesn’t improve their day-to-day work or add value.”
Sustaining DCS’ unique company culture
One of DCS’ most important differentiators in the technology consulting market is the commitment by its leaders—including Chrissy—to maintaining a healthy work-life balance for its staff. That starts by operating with a fully remote workforce, something Chrissy appreciates now more than ever as the mom of a spirited toddler who loves to explore their hometown of Silver Spring, Md.
Yet she does look forward to the times she can spend time with her DCS colleagues in person for meetings or the firm’s annual retreat. She values DCS’ efforts to balance work, socializing, and community service whenever the team meets in person.
“Getting outside of ourselves and our organization is a healthy and valuable thing. Work is important, but there are other important things in the world, too,” says Chrissy, who spent several years as a volunteer for the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Spark the Journey. “It’s great to get to know each other through service and connect differently based on the causes that matter most to us.”
As DCS continues to grow, Chrissy is focused on sustaining the unique culture that she, Ben, and the team have built since the day she signed on in 2016.
“Having a bigger team means we can have a bigger impact on more clients and more communities. So we’re growing, but it’s responsible growth,” she says. “We’re always trying to balance what’s best for us, our team, and our clients. That balance is hard—but it’s important for longevity.”