Women in Technology: Constant AI’s Catherine York Powers
In what is a recurring feature, Finopotamus spotlights innovative women who are positively impacting technology applications in the credit union industry, and beyond.
In the latest installment in our “Women in Technology” series, we visited with Constant AI’s Founder and CEO Catherine York Powers. The Portland, Maine-based fintech bills itself as powering agentic artificial intelligence platforms that automate loan operations and servicing tasks for credit unions and community banks.
By W.B. King
It was the sun, or more specifically the ability to offer solar and home efficiency lending, that led Catherine York Powers into the world of tech. In 2017, she founded Constant Energy Capital.
“Having led M&A for SunEdison, I saw firsthand how much friction stood between homeowners and clean energy upgrades, so I set out to make lending fast and accessible. Our platform got homeowners a loan decision in three minutes,” Powers told Finopotamus. “What I didn’t expect was that the real innovation would be on the back end. Loan servicing and collections were manual, complex, and resource-intensive, requiring large teams, call centers, and subservices. So, we built our own automation engine to handle it ourselves.”
The company’s innovation proved valuable. Three years later, the lending portfolio platform was sold. Her focus centered on technology, which became the foundation for what is now Constant AI, founded in 2020.
“When I started, building in the fintech space meant finding engineers who deeply understood both code and regulatory compliance, a rare and expensive combination. Everything was custom-built. Every workflow, every compliance rule, every edge case had to be manually coded by someone who understood both sides,” she continued. “That tiny talent pool made compliant financial products slow and expensive to build.”
Leading by Example
A graduate of American University, Powers’ first jobs were in politics. In 1991, she served as an executive director for the Democratic Party and later served as the National Director of Government Relations for the Screen Actors Guild. She then worked for a couple of P&L companies, one that contracted with the Department of Homeland Security and another that catered to Caribbean and Latin American clients and their interests.
“I’ve been fortunate to have mentors who shaped how I lead. In my early 20s, working in politics, I watched Minyon Moore (former White House Political Director) and Donna Brazile (former Chair of the Democratic National Committee) navigate rooms full of male executives and dominate,” she shared. “Watching Black women lead with total command showed me what real executive presence looks like, and it gave me a lasting responsibility to lift up other women and people of color as I rose.”
Maury Devine, former President of Mobil Exploration and later a ConocoPhillips board member, also served as a champion for Powers. “She taught me two things that have stayed with me since: Focus on doing one thing really well before you expand and give back in a way that has direct impact, not just writing a check or showing up to meetings,” she noted. “I try to pay that forward the same way now, whether it’s the women I hire and promote at Constant AI or how I mentor others coming up in this industry.”
The types of technology roles women serve in have been increasing over the years, she said, especially in manager and director positions. C-suite roles for women, however, she believes are still underrepresented. “Women of color especially are still a small fraction of fintech founders, and that number hasn’t shifted the way the broader ‘more women in tech’ stories suggest. I’d rather be upfront about that than let progress at one level stand in for progress everywhere,” she said. “What encourages me is that credit unions are moving differently than the broader corporate world right now.”
In her view, too many executives outside the credit unions space have “pulled back” on diversity hires and related efforts. As a result, credit union executives are becoming culture leaders.
“The panels and fintech pitch competitions I’ve been part of in this industry have gotten more diverse over the same stretch, and it shows in the caliber of people I work with across the industry every day. Moving representation into leadership takes more than a value statement,” she continued. “I hold myself to that at Constant. Every member of our leadership team except our CTO is a woman, and two of them took our flagship product from idea to production. I keep saying it publicly because the number doesn’t change if nobody names it.”
Nia to the Rescue
With a mission of ensuring all members have access to fair, user-friendly loan products, Constant AI launched “Nia” in March 2026. Powers explained it as the first agentic AI “skip-a-pay agent” in the credit union space. “Nia handles the full member interaction end to end across voice and chat, with no staff involvement. Nia now handles due-date changes and deferments as well.”
April Groh, the company’s head of product operations, was one of the noted tech leader who developed and launch Nia—from idea to production. “Lindsay Wescott, our SVP of product and enablement, owns the client integrations that put it in front of members,” Powers said. During this time frame, Constant AI was the first fintech partner named to Eltropy’s Agentic AI Platform, and Michigan State University FCU was among the first organizations to put Nia into production.
“For a member, that means help at 11 p.m. on a Sunday, without having to tell anyone the story, and with an answer in minutes. Most people are one bad month away from trouble,” she said. “What Nia changes is that getting through it no longer feels like a request under review. The member handles it in a few minutes, the same way they’d move money between accounts.”
While the advent of agentic AI has caused concerns over AI having too much control, Powers told Finopotamus that Constant AI’s coding, compliance logic and core system integrations remain deterministic and auditable.
“What agentic AI changed is how fast we can build and adapt around those rules: it helps us reason through edge cases and workflow design during development, so the engineering bottleneck isn’t rare hybrid talent anymore,” she noted. “It’s designing the right guardrails so AI can accelerate the build without ever touching the rules or the core.”
Megabanks Need Not Apply
While Powers said many fintechs claim that their goals align with credit unions, she noted that some of this is lip service. “What matters is what happens when alignment gets expensive, when the profitable path and the member path point in different directions. Structure decides that,” she said, adding that Constant AI operates like a CUSO. Who builds the product matters, Powers added.
“Credit unions serve a lot of people the rest of financial services has never served well. As a minority and woman owned business, we tend to notice problems that come from being on the wrong side of that, which shows up in what we choose to build,” said Powers.
She singled out and celebrated MSU Federal Credit Union and its CTO Ben Maxim. “He has described skip-a-pay as a high-cost interaction where the credit union was already forgoing revenue, so automating it improved both the return on the process and the member experience,” she said. “Again, MSUFCU was among the first to put Nia into production. Their CUSO, Reseda Group, then made our platform available across a network serving more than 47 million members and consumers.”
It is for these reasons, among others, including a member-first business and technology philosophy, that Powers always promotes the credit union movement.
“Credit unions answer to members, and that changes which problems get worked on first. Loan servicing is the clearest case. Credit unions spend 30% to 40% of loan operations capacity on work that can be fully automated, and the people waiting on that inefficiency are often the ones calling because they can’t make a payment,” she said.
“At a bank that’s a cost line. At a credit union it’s the mission running at partial strength,” she continued. “So, a technology that proves out at one credit union tends to reach the rest of the industry. Competitive markets don’t usually move that way. It’s why an industry made up largely of small institutions can take on something as new as agentic AI without waiting for a megabank to go first.”
