Eric J. Rodriguez

building the human era

Give a campus that has been told it is being replaced a reason to believe it is the point.

Your faculty and staff have spent three years being handed technology decisions. First the emergency pivot, then the analytics dashboards, and now AI, arriving with a policy attached and very little conversation. Most of them have concluded, quietly, that the institution is being automated around them.

They have been told the wrong story.

Eric spent eight years building factory automation at a Shell refinery and at Intel, then nine years on the business side watching what happened after the technology worked. The lesson that experience teaches applies precisely to a campus. Technology rarely fails at the technology. It fails at the seam where it meets human beings, and on a campus that seam is a person in a classroom, an advising office or a financial aid line.

This keynote moves a room from anxious to unmistakably useful, and it does it without telling anyone that nothing is changing.

Learning Outcomes

• A plain-language way to explain to students and colleagues what AI changed about learning and what it did not
• The difference between the tasks AI raised the floor on, such as drafting, summarizing and first-pass feedback, and the judgment it cannot reach
• Why adoption stalls at the human layer rather than the technical one, which is why the training did not fix it
• One sentence they can say to their department on Monday that turns AI from a threat into an assignment

Outcomes for your institution

• The campus conversation moves off academic integrity and policing, which is where it is currently stuck, and onto what the institution is actually for
• Academic affairs and student affairs describe the change in the same words, which almost never happens
• Faculty who have quietly opted out have a reason to re-enter the conversation, because nobody insulted them by promising their work is safe
• Departments have a repeatable exercise they can run on their own, without Eric and without a follow-up contract

Best for: opening convocation, all-college or in-service day, and any general session mixing faculty, staff and administration.

Also available as a 60-minute virtual keynote.

LED BY US, NOT AT US

Give a profession under pressure an honest read on what is theirs to keep.

Eric used to be the guy who showed up with the system that changed your job.

At a Shell refinery and then at Intel he was the controls engineer installing the automation. He learned early that the people closest to the work knew things the engineers did not, and that nobody had asked them. Years later, on the business side, he watched what his own work had done to the people around it. He saw roles disappear, responsibilities shift, and people discover that parts of their work became more valuable precisely because the machines could not reach them.

Faculty and staff have been on the receiving end of that pattern for a decade, and they recognize him immediately. He is honest about both halves of it, which is why this room listens.

This keynote does not tell educators their work is safe. It tells them where the work actually lives, what is changing hands rather than disappearing, and what it takes to be the one making the decision instead of the one being decided about.

Learning Outcomes

• An honest read on what is changing in teaching, advising and student support, from someone who built the technology
• The parts of their practice that get more valuable rather than less
• How to tell the difference between work that is going away and work that is changing hands
• Language for pushing back, constructively, when a tool gets aimed at the wrong task, which on most campuses right now means surveillance rather than feedback

Outcomes for your institution

• Faculty leave with something to say to their own leadership, not just something to think about
• Objections get more specific and more useful, aimed at a bad application rather than at the technology itself
• The institution gets credit for telling its people the truth, which is what makes the next initiative land
• The people most likely to disengage have a reason to stay in the conversation

Best for: faculty development days, in-service, staff conferences, professional association meetings in education, and any room where the audience is being asked to change how they work.

Also available as a 60-minute virtual keynote.

WHO GETS TO BUILD WHAT COMES NEXT

Tell the students who have had to prove they belong that the room is not finished being built.

At eleven, Eric moved from Houston to Guayaquil, Ecuador. A seventh-grade computer lab opened a door, and he has spent his career opening that door for other people. He also saw, early and up close, how unevenly technology and opportunity get handed out.

He went on to become a control systems engineer at a Shell refinery, then spent thirteen years at Intel in roles including Chief of Staff for a global business across four industries.

AI has raised the floor for everyone at once. The question now is who gets to build the ceiling, and this keynote is for the students and staff who have always had to prove they belonged in the room where that gets decided.

Learning Outcomes

• An honest account of what is changing in the work they are preparing for, from someone who built the technology
• The parts of their contribution that get more valuable rather than less
• A way to see the experience they were taught to minimize as exactly what qualifies them for the next era
• A reason to stop waiting to be invited

Outcomes for your institution

• The session is remembered as a career conversation rather than a cultural observance, which is what brings students back next year
• Students leave with language to raise their hand for the technical work happening in their own field
• Staff and faculty sponsors get something specific to do rather than a renewed sense of goodwill
• The program becomes easier to defend to the students who usually skip it

Best for: Hispanic Heritage Month, first-generation student programming, TRIO and student success events, HSI programming, STEM student organizations, and emerging leader institutes.

Available in English and Spanish.