THE FIRM
Three senior practitioners. One firm. No juniors in the room.
Tristella Advisors was built around a specific observation: the problems companies face at the intersection of AI, Salesforce, and healthcare IT don't respect discipline boundaries, but most consulting firms are organized as if they do. We built something different.
OUR STORY
How a constellation becomes a firm.
The name Tristella comes from three stars — a constellation of three practitioners who'd each spent decades building expertise in different domains, kept running into the same clients, and kept watching the same problems get solved poorly because no single firm held all the pieces.
John had spent 30 years in technology, the last two decades leading engineering organizations through the exact decisions that define whether a company scales or stalls: the first engineering hire, the architecture that has to hold at 10x, the AI deployment that has to survive board scrutiny. He'd seen founders get sold expensive solutions to problems they didn't have, and cheap solutions to problems that would cost them dearly later.
Velma had spent her career inside Salesforce — not advising from the outside, but building systems for state and federal government programs where downtime isn't inconvenient, it's a service failure. She'd seen what happens when Salesforce orgs are built without a real architecture behind them, and she'd watched Agentforce arrive as the fastest platform shift in Salesforce history, with most organizations nowhere near ready for it.
Myra had crossed between clinical practice and healthcare operations in a way that's genuinely rare: a nurse who went on to earn a PhD in Organizational Management and an MS in Health Administration, then spent a decade leading customer success and change management inside health tech companies. She knew that the reason most healthcare technology projects fail isn't the technology — it's that nobody accounted for how clinical staff actually work, and nobody owned the change.
Tristella Advisors launched as a firm where three senior practitioners work together under one roof — not a consortium of independent consultants with a shared logo, but a practice where the expertise actually connects.
THE ADVISORS
Every engagement at Tristella is led by a partner. Not a project manager who escalates to one.
Fractional CTO & AI Governance Lead
John M.
John brings 30 years in technology to every engagement, including roles as VP of Engineering at growth-stage companies and CTO of an early-stage startup. He has led engineering organizations across fintech, insurtech, media, and retail. He now focuses on AI architecture, governance, and fractional technical leadership for founders and boards who need senior judgment without a senior full-time salary. He publishes a weekly briefing on practical AI adoption for executives.
Practice Areas
Salesforce & Agentforce Architect
Velma McConnell
Velma holds 15 Salesforce certifications including Application Architect, the credential that signals genuine platform depth, not surface-level configuration experience. She has built Salesforce systems for state and federal government programs where failure isn't an option, and she runs her own independent Salesforce practice alongside her work at Tristella. Her Agentforce implementations come with the governance layer most implementers treat as someone else's problem.
Practice Areas
Industries
Organizational Effectiveness & Healthcare Operations Lead
Myra Salapare
Myra holds a BSN, an MS in Health Administration, and a PhD in Organizational Management. Before Tristella, she spent a decade leading customer success and organizational effectiveness inside health tech companies, spanning interoperability, telehealth, and AI-enabled senior care. She's the person in the room who understands both what the clinical workflow actually looks like and why technology projects stall when the people side isn't taken as seriously as the technical side.
Practice Areas
Industries
WHY TRISTELLA
The combination is the point.
Most consulting firms are built around a discipline. You hire a Salesforce firm for Salesforce. You hire a fractional CTO for technical leadership. You hire a healthcare IT consultancy for health systems work. Each of those engagements produces recommendations that land in someone else's lane.
Tristella was built around the observation that the real problems rarely stay in one lane.
A funded founder trying to ship an MVP doesn't just need technical leadership — they need someone who can make the build-vs-buy call on AI or Salesforce, structure the data in a way that doesn't become a liability later, and stand in front of their investors with a story that holds up.
A health system deploying AI doesn't just need a HIPAA checklist — they need clinical fluency, Salesforce Health Cloud expertise, and a change management layer that accounts for how nurses actually work.
We hold all of that in one firm, at the partner level. That combination is uncommon. We haven't found another firm that has it.
Senior practitioners, not account managers.
Every engagement is led by a named partner with decades of relevant experience. There are no junior staff doing the work while a partner shows up for the kickoff and the final presentation. When you engage Tristella, you work with the person whose name is on the proposal.
We'll tell you what you don't need.
We turn down engagements that weren't the right fit and are happy to make referrals. You should be told during discovery if you don't need a fractional CTO, you need a good recruiter. We'll tell you if your Salesforce problems are really change management problems. That honesty is how we stay useful. Engagements that shouldn't happen don't produce referrals.
Mission-driven organizations get a discount.
Nonprofits and mission-driven organizations receive a 10 to 15 percent discount across all engagements. This isn't a marketing gesture. We love to work with organizations doing serious work in healthcare, social services, and community development, and we want to stay accessible to them.
HOW ENGAGEMENTS WORK
Everything starts with an honest assessment.
Before any retainer or project engagement, we offer a paid discovery assessment: a full current-state review of your technology, team, or platform, delivered as a prioritized roadmap. It's designed to tell you honestly what you need, including whether it's something we do.
Most clients come to us through a referral or through one of our free self-assessments, which score your organization's readiness across AI governance, Salesforce and Agentforce, or healthcare AI adoption and deliver a personalized report. Those aren't lead qualification tools. They're designed to be genuinely useful regardless of whether you ever call us.
If you're a funded founder trying to ship, a health system trying to get AI governance right before something goes wrong, or a Salesforce org trying to get Agentforce working safely, the fastest way to figure out if we're the right fit is to start a conversation. We don't do discovery calls that are really sales calls. If we can help, we'll tell you how. If we can't, we'll tell you who can.
Ready to talk?
Start with a free assessment or reach out directly.