The Work Credit Unions Skip Before AI

from Main Street AI · host Multimodal

Ankur Patel interviews Adrian Rodriguez, former SVP of Data & Innovation at American Heritage Credit Union, now an independent Data & AI advisor.📩 Subscribe to the Main Street AI Newsletter: https://multimodal.beehiiv.com/subscribe?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=podcastAdrian 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.Guest: Adrian Rodriguez, former SVP of Data & Innovation, American Heritage Credit Union (now an independent Data & AI advisor)Host: Ankur Patel, CEO & Founder, Multimodal0:00 Introduction: Meet Adrian1:06 Technical and operational debt as an anchor2:38 The agentic AI inflection point4:11 Standing up a data function from scratch6:40 Build, hire, or partner8:09 Why six-month timelines force partnering12:14 Getting your data house in order first15:49 The data flywheel21:46 The next dashboard evolution27:33 Top-down AI leadership28:48 What's next: the data and AI journey30:42 Finding an owner for governance34:22 Leaders vs laggards35:50 The cost of AI39:43 Staying model agnostic40:32 Closing

Episode metadata supplied by the publisher feed · Published Jul 21, 2026

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The Work Credit Unions Skip Before AI

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