by Emelyne Mitoma, Constellations Fellow
During my time as a Systems Fellow at Solar Sister, I worked on the internal systems and processes that keep the organization running day-to-day. The work was detail-oriented, sometimes quiet, and entirely behind the scenes, but it was among the most grounding professional experiences I have had.
During my fellowship, Solar Sister was transitioning from cash-based payments to a fully cashless system. Every process, every guide, every step in the workflow had been built around cash, and all of it needed to be updated accurately and clearly. My role sat right at the heart of that transition. I worked with Taroworks, the application the organization uses to track sales and record transactions, editing it to remove outdated references to cash payments and updating it to reflect the new cashless processes. Every edit required real care. A single outdated field left in the wrong place could confuse someone trying to record a payment correctly. I quickly learned that in a system used by real people to track real sales, there is no such thing as a small detail.
Alongside that, I produced reconciliation reports to support Solar Sister’s monthly financial reporting. Reconciliation, matching the payment records in the system against payments actually received, is the kind of work that rarely gets attention. During a cashless transition in particular, new payment methods produce new data, and new data means new opportunities for things not to line up.
I also rewrote the system using guides that staff relied on to navigate Taroworks. They had been written before the transition and still contained cash payment instructions and outdated workflows. I went through each guide, cleaning and restructuring language so they were all easy to follow. Good documentation is often invisible. People only notice it when it is missing or wrong. My goal with every guide was to make it genuinely useful to someone encountering Taroworks for the first time.
This fellowship gave me real, hands-on experience with Taroworks, Salesforce, financial reconciliation, and operational documentation. It also taught me what it means to collaborate with a team spread across different locations and time zones, learning to communicate clearly, stay aligned, and contribute meaningfully without ever being in the same room. Those are skills I will carry into every role that comes next.
What I will remember most is not any single task or tool. It is the feeling of working for an organization whose mission you genuinely believe in. Solar Sister is a good place, thoughtful, purposeful, and full of people who show up every day because the work matters to them. Getting to contribute to that, even from behind the scenes and even in ways that most people will never notice, was something I am truly grateful for.
If the light reaches a rural home because a woman entrepreneur made a sale that was recorded correctly, reconciled accurately, and supported by a system that worked, then the behind-the-scenes work was worth every detail.