Ashley René Casey
Founder, Presence Over Pixels
St. Louis, Missouri, United States
Actions
Ashley René is the founder of Presence Over Pixels® and a keynote speaker who helps organizations solve their biggest workplace challenge: keeping humans engaged and productive in an AI-driven world. A former senior leader at Amazon and BNSF Railway, Ashley delivers actionable strategies for digital wellness, human-first leadership, and sustainable high performance.
With her signature "Future of Work Is Human" approach, Ashley transforms how teams think about technology, burnout, and authentic connection. Her talks blend corporate credibility with practical tools that audiences can implement immediately — from Fortune 500 executives to school administrators to conference attendees seeking work-life integration.
Ashley's presentations address today's most pressing workplace issues: Gen Z leadership dynamics, AI adoption without human displacement, cognitive overload management, and building resilient organizational cultures. Her engaging style combines business insights with neuroscience research, delivered without tech-shaming or unrealistic solutions.
Event planners consistently praise Ashley's ability to make complex topics accessible while driving real behavior change. Her content scales from intimate leadership retreats to 5,000-person conferences, always leaving audiences with concrete next steps rather than just inspiration.
When not on stage, Ashley performs as lead singer of rock band Bourbon Jury and champions St. Louis's vibrant arts community.
Area of Expertise
Topics
Presence Over Pixels: How to Stay Human in a Hyper-Digital Workflow
Modern work demands deep thinking inside fragmented systems—dashboards, chats, codebases, AI tools, and nonstop meetings—all competing for attention at once. The result isn’t poor discipline or weak boundaries; it’s cognitive overload that quietly degrades focus, communication, and decision-making.
Presence Over Pixels helps make that overload visible. Ashley René Casey breaks down how hyper-digital workflows affect attention, collaboration, and judgment—and why more tools and faster output aren’t solving the problem. Rather than offering productivity hacks, this session equips professionals with practical ways to create breathing room in their work, protect their ability to think clearly, and stay meaningfully connected to their teams.
Attendees leave with a sharper understanding of their digital environment and concrete strategies to reduce fatigue, improve signal over noise, and work with greater steadiness in an always-on world.
This can be delivered as a keynote or workshop.
Cognitive Load Is Killing Your Workflow (and What to Do About It)
Modern technical work requires sustained focus inside environments built for constant interruption. Between context switching, tool sprawl, alert fatigue, and compressed timelines, many teams are operating under chronic cognitive overload—often without realizing it. The cost shows up as slower decisions, brittle collaboration, rework, and burnout masked as productivity.
In this session, Ashley René Casey makes cognitive load visible. She breaks down how overload accumulates in data-driven and engineering environments, why individual discipline isn’t the root issue, and how poorly designed workflows quietly tax human thinking. Rather than offering productivity hacks, this talk focuses on practical ways to reduce friction, protect mental bandwidth, and restore clarity without sacrificing output.
Attendees leave with a clearer understanding of how their work environment shapes performance—and concrete strategies to design workflows that support better thinking, stronger collaboration, and more sustainable execution.
This can be a keynote or workshop.
AI Can Code, But It Can’t Connect: Why Human Skills Still Matter
As AI copilots, agents, and LLM-powered workflows accelerate development, technical output is no longer the bottleneck. The constraint has shifted to something harder to automate: human thinking, coordination, and judgment inside increasingly complex systems.
This talk examines how AI is reshaping developer workflows—and why communication, focus, and presence are becoming critical performance differentiators rather than “nice-to-have” skills. Ashley René Casey reframes human skills as infrastructure: the connective tissue that allows teams to design, deploy, and scale AI systems responsibly and effectively.
Rather than positioning humans in opposition to AI, this session explores how strong human capabilities amplify AI’s value—improving collaboration, reducing costly misalignment, and supporting better decisions across technical and business contexts. Attendees leave with a clearer understanding of where human skills create leverage in AI-driven environments, and how to cultivate them intentionally as part of modern engineering and leadership practice.
This can be delivered as a keynote or a workshop.
Beyond the Build: Rethinking Innovation Through a People-First Lens
Innovation has never moved faster—and yet many teams feel more fragmented, fatigued, and disconnected than ever. Beyond the Build invites technologists to zoom out and examine what constant optimization, acceleration, and “always-on” systems are doing to the humans inside them.
Rather than debating whether technology is “good” or “bad,” Ashley René Casey helps make the invisible visible: cognitive load, attention erosion, collaboration strain, and the quiet human tradeoffs embedded in modern systems. Through real-world examples and clear frameworks, this session reframes people-first design not as a values exercise, but as a performance advantage.
Attendees leave with a sharper lens for evaluating products, processes, and cultures—and practical ways to build, lead, and innovate in ways that actually support human thinking, connection, and long-term sustainability.
This can be delivered as a keynote or workshop.
Face to Face: The Original Social Network
A high-energy, deeply human session that reminds people how to connect again
—without scripts or awkwardness. Through live interaction and simple prompts, participants rediscover how natural (and necessary) real human connection is.
People leave energized, more socially confident, and surprised by how good it
feels to simply talk to one another.
Led by Ashley René, founder of Presence Over Pixels, this session offers a mix of reflection, discussion, and actionable takeaways to help you foster real connection in a tech-driven world. Whether you're coding solo or leading a team, the way you show up matters. This is about practicing intentionality, online and off, so your communication, leadership, and impact land exactly as intended.
This can be delivered as a keynote or workshop.
STC Squared Conference Sessionize Event
DevFest KC 2025 Sessionize Event
SQL Saturday St. Louis Sessionize Event
Please note that Sessionize is not responsible for the accuracy or validity of the data provided by speakers. If you suspect this profile to be fake or spam, please let us know.
Jump to top