Ask HN: Best portfolio project for someone with no CS education?

I work in finance but have really fallen in love with programming. I've written a fair amount of VBA/python/powershell to help automate portions of my job and some of it I'm pretty proud of. Unfortunately I can't slap it on github or show it to anyone in an interview because all my scripts are dependent on company-internal websites or they need client data as an input. So what I'm looking to do is program something up in python that could get me a job but I'm looking to make it really good. What I'm wondering is what sort of skills are important to demonstrate in a project to get a job? Would a little python/sqlite CRUD app be enough to get me in the door or do I need more? What are you looking for in someone who has the passion but not the formal education?