The Work Credit Unions Skip Before AI

Ankur Patel interviews Adrian Rodriguez, former SVP of Data &amp; Innovation at American Heritage Credit Union, now an independent Data &amp; AI advisor.<br /><br />📩 Subscribe to the Main Street AI Newsletter: https://multimodal.beehiiv.com/subscribe?utm_source=podcast&amp;utm_medium=description&amp;utm_campaign=podcast<br /><br />Adrian built a data and innovation function from the ground up at a credit union that didn't have one, and now advises institutions navigating the same journey for AI. His argument: most credit unions skip the unglamorous foundation work — clean, governed, clearly-defined data — that decides whether AI delivers reproducible answers or just propagates the mess underneath it.<br /><br />Guest: Adrian Rodriguez, former SVP of Data &amp; Innovation, American Heritage Credit Union (now an independent Data &amp; AI advisor)<br />Host: Ankur Patel, CEO &amp; Founder, Multimodal<br /><br />0:00 Introduction: Meet Adrian<br />1:06 Technical and operational debt as an anchor<br />2:38 The agentic AI inflection point<br />4:11 Standing up a data function from scratch<br />6:40 Build, hire, or partner<br />8:09 Why six-month timelines force partnering<br />12:14 Getting your data house in order first<br />15:49 The data flywheel<br />21:46 The next dashboard evolution<br />27:33 Top-down AI leadership<br />28:48 What's next: the data and AI journey<br />30:42 Finding an owner for governance<br />34:22 Leaders vs laggards<br />35:50 The cost of AI<br />39:43 Staying model agnostic<br />40:32 Closing