VACU’s Data Engineering, Analytics Team Recognized for Innovation, Contributions to Industry

Virginia Credit Union’s data engineering and analytics team continues to earn recognition for its industry-leading and future-focused initiatives that are helping the credit union better serve members, supporting staff and operations, and providing insights for strategic business decisions.

In the past several months, the team has been recognized with three honors, including two awards from global software provider Informatica and recognition from CULytics, the nationally recognized data analytics consultancy.

“Data is transforming our ability to help members and fueling innovation at VACU,” says Lee Brooks, VACU’s senior vice president of data analytics. “By improving our data environment and enabling staff to interact with that data in a convenient, immediate and meaningful way, we’re ensuring our ability to assess and pursue member service opportunities, while minimizing data infrastructure risks to our organization.”

VACU was recently recognized with Informatica’s Rapid Data Pipeline Development Award. Over the course of a year, VACU’s Phillip Hillis, Jason Kropka, and Sandhya Sajja transitioned the credit union’s data environment from on-premises data servers to a more-efficient, powerful and future-ready cloud- based system.

By September 2023, that new cloud-based data environment was offering a more robust infrastructure for reports, dashboards, and analytics at the credit union, all of which were helping staff and leadership make informed business decisions at the credit union. But perhaps the cloud-based environment’s most profound impact was its improved stability, providing branches and the contact center with timely, insightful information and allowing the credit union to better serve members.

“At VACU, the member is the mission,” notes Hillis, VACU’s enterprise data management director. “We’re constantly looking for ways our data can better support that member-focused mission and contribute to members’ financial success and well-being. Our members depend on us and trust us, and while this project was a tremendous undertaking, we understood how important it was in future-proofing and modernizing the data environment that serves as the foundation of our member service platform.”

In May of this year, VACU was also honored with an Innovation Award from Informatica. As part of the credit union’s migration to a cloud-based data environment, the VACU team provided Informatica with suggestions to enhance the cloud-based data environment’s functionality and feature set. That close collaboration led Informatica to deploy VACU-offered enhancements, which ultimately benefitted not only VACU, but other Informatica clients, as well.

CULytics recently recognized Richard Hayden, VACU’s data science director, with its Most Valuable Community Contributor Award for 2024. Hayden was saluted for his contributions to the credit union industry’s data analytics community, with CULytics noting that his “outstanding leadership, innovation, and commitment to knowledge-sharing among peers are truly commendable.”

Hayden served as a featured speaker at the CULytics 2024 Summit, a premier analytics conference for the industry, and his willingness to share his expertise and knowledge has made him a leading voice and champion for data analytics within the credit union space.

“Credit unions have such a long, proud tradition of cooperation and collaboration, and we’re all made better by our willingness to share our knowledge, best-practices and experience, ” says Hayden. “Analytics holds so much promise in transforming the way we serve our members and conduct business. Growing and nurturing our domain within the credit union industry will pay dividends for our members and ensure our credit unions are better able to compete and win in an increasingly challenging marketplace.”