Women in Technology: Sun Community Federal Credit Union’s Clarissa Morales

In what is a recurring feature, Finopotamus spotlights innovative women who are positively impacting technology applications in the credit union industry, and beyond.

In the latest installment in our “Women in Technology” series, we visited with Sun Community Federal Credit Union’s Business Applications and Intelligence Manager Clarissa Morales. The $900 million El Centro, Calif.-based credit union supports more than 55,000 members at nine branches (soon to be 10).

By W.B. King

When Clarissa Morales joined Sun Community Federal Credit Union’s IT department in 2014, the organization was in the middle of our core conversion to Corelation KeyStone—a quintessential trial by fire scenario.

“The IT manager let me get involved. I didn't have technical skills yet, but getting hands-on with the core helping set up the tables from the ground up gave me a foundation in KeyStone that most people don't get until years into their career,” Morales told Finopotamus.

Clarissa Morales

Three years earlier, she began her tenure with the credit union as teller and later reception. “I'm a generally curious person, and I saw a need for help desk support and liked the problem-solving, so I started teaching myself,” she continued. “So, my path into tech wasn't planned; it grew out of curiosity and being in the right place at the right time. I actually started college for special education. Tech found me.”

From Siloed to Integrated

When tech did find her, she said IT departments were largely reactive: help desk tickets and keeping the lights on. “Today, tech is embedded in every strategic conversation. My own role didn't exist when I started: it spans core banking administration, data infrastructure, business intelligence, and enterprise applications all at once,” she noted. “That's a real shift from siloed departments to integrated, data-driven teams.”

Another change was how few women worked in tech when she began her career. Initially, the only women in her department were Morales and her then manager. Seeing women in tech outside of the credit union was also a rare occurrence, she noted.

“That contrast really hit me at the [Microsoft Fabric] conference in 2025. I remember laughing because it was the first time I did not see a line to the restroom, while the men's line wrapped around. It was a pretty clear picture of the ratio in the room,” she shared. “Then in 2026, at that same conference, I noticed more women there than the year before and that was just a one-year difference. It's a small thing, but it's the kind of detail that tells you something real is shifting.”

Speaking about the Credit Unions Microsoft Fabric User Group which she recently co-founded, she noted it was women such as Kaila Evans, Andrea Lizarraga, and Kristen Benjamin that gave the organization life. “They all played a part in getting that community started. It's grown to 80-plus people across 30-plus credit unions now, and I see more women showing up in data and BI roles specifically,” said. “It's not universal yet, but the trend is real, and it's encouraging.”

When Finopotamus asked Morales about her mentors, she first pointed to Omar Vasquez who initially hired her. Neil McSweeney, she explained, later encouraged her to pursue the technical side of the industry. “He's the reason I studied cybersecurity and earned my CompTIA Security+, which gave me a foundation in thinking security-first.”

Eliza Dunn was another champion who saw something in Morales that she herself didn’t see at the time. “She's the one who pushed me toward core development in the first place. I'll admit I resented it at first; I thought I wanted networking. I was wrong, and that redirection shaped my whole career,” she shared.

Next of her list was Fabian Mendivil who taught her SQL from scratch. “He took a bag of Skittles and taught me the way you'd teach a kid to count. We worked through page-by-page Corelation notebook on writing SQL queries in Keystone, which became the team's go-to reference,” she continued. “It's still what new hires on our Core Apps team learn from today.”

Kevin Morrow encouraged Morales to embrace public speaking. By him putting her in “uncomfortable situations,” Morales said she grew as a professional. “He had me getting up and speaking in front of people because he knew I could do it before I did,” she noted, adding that he also pushed for the adoption of the Fabric adoption. “Turns out I actually love talking to people; I just needed someone to shove me into the room.”

To pay these inspirational experiences forward, Morales said that she is a “hands-on” team leader who encourages ongoing education, accreditation and networking.

“We host monthly Fabric meetings completely free so anyone can learn, no matter what credit union they're from. And it doesn't stop at scheduled sessions; if someone from another credit union reaches out and needs help, I'll jump on a call with them,” she continued. “I got to where I am because I asked a lot of questions and had people who were generous enough to help me, so now I just want to be that person for everyone else.”

One Unified View

Among career highlights to date is enhancing the credit union’s data warehouse, which included working in Google Data Studio, which was Looker Studio then (2020).

“Around the same time, we also looked at a hosted SQL server paired with Power BI and Tableau. We looked at Microsoft Fabric in 2024, but it wasn't ready yet, so we kept building in Looker Studio in the meantime. Kevin Morrow kept pushing for Fabric, and once it matured we officially went all-in in 2025,” she noted. “I'd looked at Power BI before and wasn't sold, but I gave it another try and loved it and since we were already a Microsoft shop, going all-in on Fabric meant one unified view instead of scattered tools.”

More recently, Morales led Sun Community’s full core migration, which included over 50 integrations to its new hosting provider that was completed in February 2026. The credit union also won an ARC Award at the MeridianLink Conference for using data to update their Instant Decision Decisioning process.

Through the Credit Unions Microsoft Fabric User Group, the credit union is also hosting a free four-part DP-700 certification study series in July. “The registration numbers have genuinely surprised me,” she said. “Session 1 has over 500 registered; Session 2 – 4 have over 300. Seeing that many people sign up to study together says a lot about how much appetite there is for shared learning.”

Among tech trends on her radar are artificial intelligence applications but she noted that while AI is changing by the day, it’s only as good as the data behind it. “You can have the best AI tool in the world, but if the data feeding it or training it isn't clean and correct, it's not going to give you anything useful,” she continued. “That's actually a big part of what I'm working on right now, building an internal AI tool that can answer employee questions against our own policies and documentation, rather than a generic chatbot and the hardest part isn't the AI itself, it's making sure the data behind it is right.”

Fabric Apps, Microsoft's newest release, is another enjoyable tool, she said. While it’s still in the preview stage, it will eventually allow her team to build full applications data models, APIs, authentication, hosting—all of it directly on top of your Fabric data, she said.

Collaborate, Don't Compete

What has always drawn Morales to the credit union movement is the cooperative, community ethos, which she said reflects the small farming and agriculture community she hails from in Imperial Valley.

“We might lack in things to do—we don't even have a Chick-fil-A—but we don't lack in community. Everyone kind of just knows everyone and helps each other out,” she noted. “IT jobs are few and far between here since it's a lower-income area, so I've always really appreciated the people locally who took the time to help me learn and grow, because that opportunity isn't something you can take for granted in a place like this.”

It is this philosophy that gave Morales the idea to co-found Credit Unions Microsoft Fabric User Group. The cooperative concept, she added, wasn’t something Microsoft immediately understood.

“I had to explain credit union culture to Microsoft: We're not banks competing for the same customer in the same market. We genuinely want to see each other succeed and grow,” she said. “Once they understood that, they were fully on board and have supported the group ever since. Now it's at 80-plus people across 30-plus credit unions — proof that the ‘collaborate, don't compete’ model works.”

For the same reasoning, she said the credit union’s relationship with Corelation, MeridianLink, Televoice, and Access Softek have been successful. “That's the real value of partnering with like-minded fintechs: it stops being vendor-and-client and starts being a genuine community working toward the same goal,” she told Finopotamus. “It's made our team better, and it's made the whole user group better.”