REMINDER - Presentation will be at our new location,
MEM (formerly Missouri Employers Mutual)
Breakfast and networking from 7:45am to 8:10am
Presentation starting at 8:15am
Your attention is now your scarcest resource. Most professionals are carrying too many ideas, tasks, and decisions in their heads—and for many, AI has made that overload worse instead of better. HR professionals, in particular, sit at the intersection of leadership expectations, employee experience, and operational reality, constantly absorbing friction, detecting signals others miss, and translating executive direction into human conversations. That role makes AI incredibly powerful when structured well—and deeply exhausting when it’s not.
This session reframes how HR can work with large language models by treating them not as shortcuts or productivity hacks, but as a structured thinking workspace. Much like a workshop or craft room, the real value isn’t the tools themselves—it’s having space to spread ideas out, test assumptions, make mistakes, and build something personally useful.
Participants will explore why AI often turns into a digital junk drawer instead of a support system, and how to intentionally design an organized AI thinking space that supports clarity rather than chaos. The discussion will unpack why people adopt AI so differently, how invisible obstacles undermine productivity, and why one-size-fits-all approaches to adoption rarely stick. Attendees will learn a practical framework for turning scattered experimentation into a structured environment that supports real thinking and decision-making, while also identifying which workforce adoption archetype best represents their current state and what that means for the easiest path forward.
By the end of the session, participants will leave with concrete, immediately usable actions and downloadable tools to help make AI work for them and their teams—no technical expertise required. This program is designed to help HR professionals reclaim focus, reduce cognitive load, and use AI in a way that aligns with how humans actually think and work.
Angie Bailey
Angie Bailey brings a rare blend of media, education, and business transformation experience to conversations about the future of work. She spent years delivering the news on KOMU-TV and continues to teach journalism and strategic communication at the University of Missouri. Most recently, Angie has been building go-to-market operations and e‑commerce strategy at EquipmentShare, supporting the company ahead of its recent IPO.
After nearly four years designing digital infrastructure, Angie has turned her attention to a largely unsolved workforce challenge: making innovation—and particularly AI—actually stick for non-technical humans. She approaches AI not as an expert, but as a highly engaged super-user who has spent nearly two years delegating daily work to tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. Along the way, she’s asked critical questions many professionals quietly share: Why aren’t more smart, capable people using AI productively? And what is the real cost of waiting?
Angie believes there’s no requirement to pretend AI is harmless—which is exactly why more professionals deserve a seat at the table as decisions about their work are being made. Her goal is deeply practical: to help participants engage with AI on their own terms so they can confidently participate in—and influence—a near-future workforce where humans and AI work side by side.
