Casey White

Digital, AI and transformation leader in Halifax, Nova Scotia

Casey White

I help organizations change how they work with technology, and I bring the people with me.

More than twenty years leading digital change, from CRM consulting to running global digital products at Spirax Group, a FTSE 100 industrial group in 60+ countries, with a £3.2M platform and a team of 34. Today I run Aurenia Group, a transformation and AI consultancy in Halifax, build AI products of my own, and make time to mentor the next generation of digital leaders. I'm also studying for the IAPP AI Governance Professional certification, expected by the end of 2026.

How I got hereWhat I do now
Casey White
Casey White44.65 N, 63.57 W

What I'd tell any leadership team

For most of my career I kept my head down and let the work speak. I'm starting to share more of what I've learned, and these convictions sit underneath all of it. Each was learned on a real project, and each links to the story behind it.

  1. AI is the autopilot. You still need a pilot.

    Where I learned itAurenia Group

  2. The money is where people and technology meet.

    Where I learned itThe drink order

  3. Adoption isn't a KPI you tick off. It's a program you keep working.

    Where I learned it“Do what you did in Canada”

  4. Real growth and price increases look the same on a chart. Look closer.

    Where I learned itThe server in the corner

  5. A register that softens bad news is not positive, it is late.

    Where I learned itHow I run a project

  6. Digital should accelerate the business, not replace it.

    Where I learned itBuy, build or both

  7. Listen before you fix.

    Where I learned itWhat I hold to

Where I come from

My roots, then the road: from a Microsoft Dynamics CRM partner in 2001 to running global digital products for an industrial group in the UK. The roles, the moments that shaped me, and what the people I worked for said.

Roots

First-generation Canadian. Culturally Jamaican. A global citizen with a Halifax address.

My parents came to Canada from Jamaica and started a life here. I grew up in Scarborough, Mississauga and Toronto, in a big Jamaican family, with the music, the food and the energy of the island all around me. I'm Canadian born, culturally Jamaican, racially mixed, and a global citizen at heart.

Growing up between cultures taught me to adapt, to stay curious about people, and to stay steady when things change. It's where my leadership comes from: a deep compassion for people, and wanting everyone at the table to feel good and share in the win.

I moved to Halifax in 2019. After a few visits I fell for the East Coast: its charm, its people and its slower pace, which felt close to the rhythm I grew up with. I've worked remotely ever since, before Covid made it normal, and for years I lived here while flying all over the US, from San Francisco and LA to Houston, San Antonio, Omaha, Chicago, Boston, New York, Washington, Miami and South Carolina; to Mexico City, Monterrey and Ensenada; to Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina and Brazil; and to the United Kingdom, Scotland, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Amsterdam. I've been to every province in Canada; the three territories are still on the list. Halifax is home; my network is global.

0°BostonNew YorkWashingtonChicagoOmahaSan FranciscoLos AngelesSan AntonioHoustonMiamiSouth CarolinaMonterreyEnsenadaBCABSKMBQCEvery province in CanadaATLANTIC CANADANew BrunswickNova ScotiaPrince Edward IslandNewfoundlandand LabradorJamaicaTorontoHalifaxMexico CityColombiaPeruChileArgentinaBrazilUnited KingdomScotlandIrelandAmsterdamPortugalSpain

Jamaica

Where my family comes from

Toronto

Where I grew up, my teams, and the first half of my career

Halifax

Home since 2019

Where I come fromEvery province in CanadaAcross the US and MexicoWhere the work and the road took me

Career

  1. 2026 to now

    Founder

    Aurenia Group

    Digital transformation and AI consulting for Atlantic Canada, and a studio for our own products. AI is the autopilot; you still need a pilot.

  2. 2023 to 2025

    Global Head of Digital Products

    Spirax Group · Cheltenham, UK

    Industrial IoT and digital platform portfolio, £3.2M Connect platform, team of 34 with five direct reports.

  3. 2019 to 2023

    Global Product Owner, Customer Channel & Engagement

    Spirax Group · Cheltenham, UK

    Global e-commerce, CRM, mobile field apps and the customer portal.

  4. 2017 to 2019

    Divisional IS Director, Americas

    Spirax Sarco · Toronto

    First divisional IS leader, ten countries.

  5. 2011 to 2017

    IT & Marketing Manager, Strategic Pricing Manager

    Spirax Sarco Canada · Toronto

    Executive team. Hybrid cloud, B2B e-commerce, award-winning pricing.

  6. 2001 to 2011

    VP, Professional Services

    The Trainer's Advisory Network

    Microsoft Dynamics CRM partner. Clients included GE Healthcare, TD Wealth, BMO and CIBC Wood Gundy.

  • Selected for Spirax's Aspire high-potential leadership programme
  • Customer speaker at Oracle, Microsoft and Salesforce events and webinars

Five stories from more than twenty years

Every one of these is the same move in a different room. Find where the business is stuck, use technology to unstick it, and bring the people along.

  1. 2001 to 2011

    The drink order

    VP, Professional ServicesThe Trainer's Advisory Network

    The money is where people and technology meet.

    The situation

    Investment advisors at CIBC Wood Gundy were losing the small human touches that win client loyalty as their books grew.

    What I did

    • Mapped how the advisors actually built relationships, then automated the whole client lifecycle in CRM.
    • Kept the small touches in, down to recording a client's favourite drink so it was waiting when they walked in.
    • Ran the consulting team and carried a $400K personal revenue target, selling sales methodology more than software.

    What changed

    ~27%
    portfolio growth, as the client reported it
    $400K
    personal revenue target carried

  2. 2011 to 2017

    The server in the corner

    IT & Marketing ManagerSpirax Sarco Canada

    Real growth and price increases look the same on a chart. Look closer.

    The situation

    Spirax was my client for four years and asked me to join three times. I said yes because of the people: no turnover and a lot of happy faces. What I walked into was chaos, including a contractor charging $500 a month to manage a server that was switched off in the corner.

    What I did

    • Ended the contract on the evidence, then rebuilt Canadian IT on hybrid cloud and SD-WAN, sold to the executive team on risk as much as cost.
    • Sat with the VP of Sales for weeks tagging 3,500 products by price sensitivity, and built the Power BI tool that showed where pricing was leaking.
    • Moved our top distributors onto B2B e-commerce on Shopify, working with Shopify.

    What changed

    ~47%
    lower network cost
    2×
    Spirax Sarco Pricing Award winner, 2016 and 2017
    $2M+
    new annual distributor revenue

  3. 2017 to 2019

    “Do what you did in Canada”

    Divisional IS Director, AmericasSpirax Sarco

    Adoption isn't a KPI you tick off. It's a program you keep working, and a good partner hands the keys back.

    The situation

    The mandate was one sentence: do what you did in Canada across the whole division. Ten countries, no divisional IT leadership, and every country doing its own thing.

    What I did

    • Used the same playbook: sit with the business, hear the real problems, then line technology up behind them.
    • Rolled out Dynamics 365 across all ten countries in a year with Hitachi Solutions, and funded Prosci ADKAR because adoption was the real product.
    • When a $750K hospital deal stalled because the customer couldn't see our Toronto lab, I hired a Google photographer to shoot a 360 tour. They toured it from British Columbia, and we closed.
    • Ended the Hitachi engagement on purpose once our own team could run the CRM.

    What changed

    10
    countries in one year, against a benchmark of two or three
    $750K
    deal closed with a virtual lab tour

  4. 2019 to 2023

    Seven weeks

    Global Product Owner, Customer Channel & EngagementSpirax Group

    E-commerce doesn't take people out of the sale. It takes out the parts they don't need to be in.

    The situation

    COVID took face-to-face selling away overnight. A profitable, hundred-year-old company had to sell online, fast, and plenty of people asked how you fix what isn't broken.

    What I did

    • Ran the vendor selection myself and shipped an Oracle Commerce MVP in seven weeks, working with Oracle and Pierce Washington, with daily stand-ups inside a waterfall company.
    • Cut the deep back-office integrations. Refused to cut good design and real customer input.
    • Answered the sceptics plainly: it's nice on the beach until you see the wave coming. A portal doesn't end customer intimacy, it improves it.
    • Introduced OKRs, and taught them to senior leaders who hadn't used them before.

    What changed

    7 weeks
    to a global MVP, a record for Oracle
    2–5%
    online revenue targets above each company's plan, with CSAT and NPS tracked

  5. 2023 to 2025

    Buy, build or both

    Global Head of Digital ProductsSpirax Group

    Digital should accelerate the business, not replace it. Understand the customer faster, serve them better, repeat.

    The situation

    Spirax had tried industrial IoT for ten years. Buying off the shelf would leave us landlocked on someone else's roadmap within 18 months. Building from scratch would stall in a consensus culture.

    What I did

    • Ran a scored selection, recorded every meeting and demo, and chose a hybrid: an Azure IoT foundation with a product we could shape, delivered with Microsoft and Mesh Systems.
    • Reorganized a team of 34, five of them my direct reports, into a digital factory with functional leads, and brought the program into our own Jira and Confluence.
    • Restructures kept taking people from the team. I rebuilt trust with transparency, honesty and consistency.
    • Co-shaped the group digital strategy and presented it to the CEO and divisional managing directors.

    What changed

    8 weeks
    to the Connect platform MVP
    £3.2M
    the largest line in the group's digital portfolio

In other people's words

“You naturally offer a servant leader style to the way you operate and are seen as someone you can rely on.”
Manager, Americas
“Communication, empathy and influence are strong points for Casey.”
Manager, UK
“I received feedback from several colleagues working with Casey how positive and progressive the team work is compared to other teams.”
Manager, UK

From my performance reviews at Spirax Group, quoted as written. I was rated Outstanding on leadership by both my direct and indirect managers.

More from my reviews

  • “You are putting the Americas at the leading edge of change.”

    Manager, Americas

  • “Casey shows very strong leadership not just of his team but of the Digital programme overall.”

    Manager, UK

  • “eCommerce was one of the highlights of the Digital Programme in 2020. Casey exceeded expectations in the management and delivery of the eCommerce project.”

    Manager, UK

  • “You have created a leadership style of 'servant leader' which I like, and also like the way in which you are also raising the bar.”

    Manager, Americas

In the room

Most of my work happens with people around a table: workshops, whiteboards, and the meal after. A few moments with teams I've led and worked alongside.

A team standing around a round table covered in sticky notes during a workshop, several people laughing

Workshops are where the work starts: everyone at the table, and the sticky notes doing the arguing.

Flick the top photo aside, or use the arrow keys.

What I bring

Whether it's a board, a leadership team or a client, what organizations need from digital and AI leadership comes down to the same few things: deliver outcomes, win adoption, scale past pilots, govern AI, and grow people. Here is where each shows up in my work.

  • Outcomes, not projects

    $2M+ in new annual distributor revenue from B2B e-commerce, about 47% lower network cost, and online revenue targets of 2 to 5% above each company's plan.

    The server in the corner

  • Adoption, not just go-live

    Dynamics 365 across ten countries in one year, against a benchmark of two or three, with Prosci ADKAR funded because adoption was the real product.

    Do what you did in Canada

  • Scale past the pilot

    A global e-commerce MVP in seven weeks, then a £3.2M IIoT platform, the largest line in the group's digital portfolio, with a team of 34.

    Seven weeks

  • AI that's built and governed

    Two AI products live in the app stores, eight production AI patterns, a person signing off on what matters, design for Canadian privacy and data residency, and the IAPP AIGP in progress.

    Building with AI

  • A partner to the CEO

    Co-shaped the group digital strategy and presented it to the CEO and divisional managing directors; sat on the executive team in Canada.

    Buy, build or both

  • People who grow

    Reorganized a team of 34 into a digital factory with functional leads and taught OKRs to senior leaders. At Spirax I brought graduate-program hires and college co-op students onto my team and gave each of them real work to own, like running an e-commerce deployment as a graduate.

    People I backed

How I lead

What I believe about bringing people through change, the books I keep going back to, the people I backed early, and what I'm like at the table and off the clock.

What I hold to

Six things I try to hold to, and where you can see them in my work.

Integrity

Hand the keys back.

I ended our CRM partner's engagement as soon as my team could run the system, because that is what real adoption looks like.

Who I learn from

Leadership, mentorship and innovation are what I care most about, and these are the books I keep going back to. Pull one off the shelf for the idea and what I actually do with it.

Leadership

Leaders Eat Last

Simon Sinek

The idea

A team feels safe when the leader absorbs the pressure.

What I do with it

When something goes wrong on my team, it's mine. When it goes well, the people who did the work are the ones named to the executives.

People I backed

Mentoring, for me, means handing someone real work early and standing behind them while they do it. Four people who joined my teams near the start of their careers, the stretch I gave each of them, and where they are now.

Names stay private. I can put you in touch with any of them on request.

  1. How they joined

    College co-op student

  2. The stretch I gave them

    Ran pieces of our marketing programs and led the change management for our e-commerce site.

    Stayed on for five years as our pricing and marketing analyst.

  3. Where they are now

    Data architect and reporting analyst

At my table

I'm a foodie at heart. I learned to cook from my Jamaican grandmother and my mom, who was adamant that I learn. In a big family, that matters: I didn't want our culture to end with my grandmother and my parents, so I made sure I could carry it.

A grazing board with seared tuna in a soy glaze and enoki mushrooms beside cured meats, cheeses, figs, dragon fruit, mandarins and nori

A board, my way: seared tuna with a soy glaze and enoki beside cured meats, cheese, figs, dragon fruit and nori.

Flick the top print aside, or use the arrow keys.

From my grandmother's kitchen

  • Oxtail
  • Ackee and saltfish
  • Jerk chicken
  • Curry goat
  • Roti

And from everywhere since

As I travelled and ate my way around the world, the kitchen picked things up: Asian, Italian, Latin American. Now a lot of what I cook is fusion, my grandmother's dishes meeting everywhere I've been. Which is a fair description of me, too.

Big family dinners, dinner parties, fish fries outside. If you come over, you're eating.

Cooking is project management

I've noticed a lot of people in technology love to cook, and I don't think it's an accident. A meal is a project: an objective, resources, a deadline, and people you want to delight.

  1. Nail the ingredients

    Fresh, in season, and enough for everyone at the table.

  2. Nail the recipe

    My grandmother's method, then a little of everywhere I've eaten since.

  3. Nail the timing

    Everything lands on the table hot, at the same time.

  4. Nail the tastes

    Know who you're cooking for and what they love.

Cook it together, plate it with care, and serve something people remember.

Off the clock

The rest of me, roughly in order of how often you'd find me there.

  • On a beach

    If you can't find me, I'm probably on a beach somewhere, watching the ocean and listening to the waves. It's where I think, and where my best ideas show up.

  • With family

    I come from a big family, and it keeps growing: friends, friends of cousins, friends of aunts and uncles, and people I've worked with who became family.

  • At a show

    I love music. If there's a concert worth seeing, I'll be there, and I won't say no to a dancehall party.

  • In the stands

    I was at the Raptors' very first draft in Toronto. Leafs fan through the heartbreak, Blue Jays fan through both World Series, in the parade for the second. Getting into F1, and I still play basketball.

  • At the workbench

    Video game generation: gamer, researcher, tinkerer. Building things is how I relax, which explains the studio.

  • In a book

    I read a lot, mostly to get better at the work and at being a person. The shelf above is a fair sample.

What I do now

In January 2026 I started Aurenia Group, a transformation and AI consultancy in Halifax. What we do, and the method we run every engagement on.

Aurenia Group

In January 2026 I started Aurenia Group, a digital transformation and AI consultancy in Halifax. We work with organizations of 10 to 500 people across Atlantic Canada, and we drive to the rooms in Halifax, Moncton, Charlottetown, Fredericton, Saint John and St. John's.

AI is the autopilot. You still need a pilot.

Every commercial flight still carries two pilots. Our job is to be the second person up front, and then to make sure you don't need us there.

Three ways to work with us

  • You need to decide what to do

    The nine-stage pipeline

    Diagnose, decide, deliver. A written report at every stage: where you stand, what your customers say, the strategy, the roadmap, the business case, the vendor pick, then the change and the value.

    Priced per stage. Most engagements start with one.

  • You have a project and nobody to run it

    Second Pilot

    We run your transformation or AI project from inception to execution: a charter before anyone buys anything, two-week cycles, the vendor held to the statement of work, and a runbook at hand-off.

    Priced per engagement.

  • You want AI working this month

    Claude for Your Business

    Claude Team set up and tuned to the tools you already run, your staff trained in one session, and a one-page runbook with the off switch. For teams of 2 to 25.

    Fixed price. In much of Atlantic Canada a CBDC may cover most of it.

Not sure which? The free Pulse Check takes five minutes: fifteen questions, your tier, your percentile and three blind spots.

Take the Pulse Check

Also delivered

  • An AI receptionist on ElevenLabs, connected to a live calendar: customers went from waiting up to a day for a reply to booking in minutes.
  • A custom blog that produces its own marketing content, built in three days.
  • TreeCanopy, from a tree surgeon's know-how to a finished app in twelve weeks.
Visit aureniagroup.com

How I run a project

PRINCE2, SAFe, Agile and ADKAR are the foundations, and the Aurenia team is certified in all four. None of them is run by the book. Each project gets the parts that fit its size and its risk, and every artefact those frameworks ask for is kept, with its posture changed and its fields intact.

  • Same discipline, different posture.

    An opportunity still has an owner, a likelihood, an impact and a date. A win still starts as an issue with a severity.

  • A person, not a role. A fact, not an adjective.

    Marie, not "dispatch". Forty labels with two misprints, not "great progress".

  • The bad row goes first.

    The Friday page opens on the worst thing. Positivity is in what we do with the entry, not in hiding it.

What each framework gives the project

PRINCE2A business justification checked at every stage, a stage gate that can say stop, and managing by exception.Who gains what by when: the benefits register, with a person in the first column.
SAFeOne shared cadence when several teams or vendors move together, and one view of the dependencies.The Collaboration column of the register: every dependency, with a name.
AgileShort cycles, a prioritized backlog, working increments, reviews and retrospectives.The Handover, a review the owner runs on real work, and the Debrief, bad row first. No story points, no 9:00 stand-up.
ADKARAwareness, desire, knowledge, ability and reinforcement, from Prosci, planned from the first week.An adoption plan written to the people it is about, with 30, 60 and 90 day waypoints after go-live.

The CREW register

RAID lists what could go wrong. CREW is who gets it right. Same four columns, rewritten so the team wants to open it on a Monday, and every entry keeps every field a RAID entry has, so a PMO can still have its RAID view.

  • Collaboration

    replaces Dependencies

    Every dependency is a person or a team, not a thing to wait on.

    The weekly questionWho do we need this week, and have we made it easy for them to say yes?

  • Readiness

    replaces Risks

    A risk is a readiness question: what we need in place if it lands, and what it opens up if it doesn't.

    The weekly questionIf this landed on Monday, are we ready, and what would we be glad we had done?

  • Evidence

    replaces Assumptions

    An assumption stays on the register until there is evidence for it.

    The weekly questionWhat are we still taking on faith, and what would it take to know?

  • Wins

    replaces Issues

    An issue is logged the day it happens, with its severity, and leaves as a win: what was fixed and what changed so it doesn't come back.

    The weekly questionWhat went wrong this week, what did we do about it, and what is better now?

Every entry keepsOwnerLikelihood and impactNext stepDateStatus

A register that softens bad news is not positive, it is late.

The rhythm

The same project at four zoom levels. Each has one document the owner reads and one moment the crew shares, and nothing at a larger scale is written from scratch: it is compiled from the scale below.

Three short check-ins and one page on Friday.

Monday, Wednesday and Friday by 10:00, everyone posts three lines: finished, next, stuck. Anyone who writes stuck gets a call before lunch. By 3:00 on Friday the owner has one page: the honest headline first, then done, next, stuck with a name, one decision that is theirs, and money against budget.

  • The Walkaround
  • The Friday page
  • The Handover
  • The Debrief

Read the full method

What I build

I still build. The AI patterns I use in production, how I govern them, and the products they run in, from business software to passion projects.

Building with AI

Plenty of people advise on AI. I build with it, inside large organizations and on my own. Eight patterns I keep reaching for, and where each one runs in production. The engineering is here; the prompts stay with the products.

I'm model-agnostic and choose by task and cost: Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini and OpenAI GPT (including Azure OpenAI), open-source models run locally with Ollama, plus Microsoft Copilot Studio. The products here are built with Claude (Sonnet and Haiku), Gemini Flash and Flash Lite, Gemini image models, Google text embeddings, Pl@ntNet, ElevenLabs and MCP, through the Vercel AI Gateway, on Supabase with pgvector, Next.js, Capacitor and Expo.

Speech in, structured data out

"Tree two, sycamore, seventeen metres..."Tree recordSpeciesSycamoreHeight17 mWorkCrown liftQuoteLine addedSeconds, not evenings
  1. Capture
  2. Understand
  3. Merge
  4. Confirm

An arborist talks at a tree and seconds later there's a tree record with a priced line on the quote. A customer calls a small business and the appointment lands in the real calendar.

Where it runsTreeCanopyCocoonAn AI receptionist for an Aurenia client

Passion project: consumer AI

Live on Google Play

CosmicTea

Twelve AI guides in eight languages. A real ephemeris engine computes the chart and the AI may only interpret what was computed, so it can't invent a planet. Models are routed by tier, so the cost of each answer matches what the customer pays. The architecture is the business model.

How I built it

Voice transcript

“Tree two, sycamore, early mature, seventeen metres, five sixty millimetre stem, co-dominant fork at four metres, category B2, crown lift to four metres over the footpath. ”

On the tree record

Species
Sycamore
Age
Early mature
Height
17 m
Stem
560 mm
Category
B2
Work
Crown lift to 4 m over the footpath

Business product: field software

Live on the App Store and Google Play

TreeCanopy

Twelve weeks of building with a working tree surgeon. Halfway through we pivoted from consultant reports to voice-first capture for crews in the field: ten seconds, no tech skills needed. That was the real pain.

How I built it

Governing AI

IAPP AIGP AI Governance Professional

In progress, expected by the end of 2026

AI is the autopilot; someone still has to be the pilot. I build governance into the product rather than bolting it on, I design for Canadian privacy and data residency, and I'm studying for the IAPP's AI Governance Professional certification to put a recognized frame around how I already work.

GovernMapMeasureManage

Mapped to the four functions of the NIST AI Risk Management Framework. Govern sits in the middle because it runs through the other three.

Govern

Who decides, and who can switch it off

  • A person signs anything that moves money, data or someone's job, before it goes live.

    Aurenia engagements

  • Every rollout leaves a one-page runbook: what it does, where it gets things wrong, how to switch it off.

    Claude for Your Business, Second Pilot

  • Kill switches and budget guards that warn, then pause.

    TreeCanopy, CosmicTea

The rules are arriving

  1. Jan 2025

    Canada's proposed AI act (AIDA) dies with Bill C-27

  2. Jun 2025

    Federal Directive on Automated Decision-Making, version 4, takes effect

  3. Jun 2026

    Canada's national AI strategy leans on privacy reform and SME adoption

  4. Dec 2027

    EU AI Act duties for high-risk systems begin

  5. Aug 2028

    EU AI Act duties for AI built into regulated products, such as industrial machinery

The studio

Under Aurenia Group I design and build products of my own, with AI as a teammate. Some are serious, some are for fun. All of them taught me something I use at work.

See everything I've built

Let's get to know each other

People get in touch for all kinds of reasons: a leadership team weighing a transformation, a founder who wants a sounding board on AI, someone early in their career looking for a mentor, a board that wants a second opinion. Whatever brings you here, I'd like to hear from you.

Thirty minutes, no pitch: bring a question, a decision you are weighing, or just your curiosity.

Book 30 minutesEmail meLinkedIn

cahwhite@gmail.com

Based in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

People come to me for

  • Mentorship for emerging digital leaders
  • A sounding board for executives and founders
  • Counsel on AI strategy and governance
  • Transformation and change, with Aurenia
  • Talks and workshops for leadership teams