I was thrilled to see the Living Corporate podcast recognized by Forbes yesterday at the top of the list of recommendations for Black History Month and beyond. In addition to being a big fan of it’s co-founders and a two-time guest interviewer on the pod myself, I’m an evangelist for Living Corporate because it does something many multimedia platforms don’t. It amplifies the voices of underrepresented people at work. What does that mean, exactly? It means that, in much of Corporate America, the demographics of the workforce stand in stark contrast to those of the general population, particularly as you get closer to the top. Plenty of megaphones, real and metaphorical, exist for those in positions of power. Frequently, the same is not true for those in the minority.
It’s been confirmed for me that I’m far from alone in terms of my experience with depression. Using this blog, and leveraging my professional and personal networks, I’ve been able to create the beginnings of a platform to advance the discussion on mental health in the workplace.
But, it can’t just be my voice. I’ve got to find ways I can turn up the volume for others.
From history major, with side quests in Medieval Studies and chemical engineering, to nonprofit finance leader, Big 4 tax partner, technologist, researcher, and now co-founder of Divine, nothing about my career has been linear. The throughline has always been systems: financial systems, organizational systems, technological systems, and human systems. I have an MBA in Operations and Supply Chain Management and a PhD in Organizational Leadership Psychology, and I’ve spent my career trying to understand how complex systems shape people’s choices, opportunities, wellbeing, and sense of belonging. Today, my work sits at the intersection of psychology, technology, human-centered design, and digital trust. I am co-founder of Divine, an open-source, decentralized social video app built to put creativity back in human hands and replace doomscrolling with joyscrolling. Divine is part of a bigger question I care deeply about: how do we create online spaces that support safety, creativity, identity, and belonging without defaulting to surveillance, extraction, or control? At Divine, I wear a lot of hats across engineering, finance, operations, and strategy, while helping shape the app’s trust, safety, and values work. I focus especially on teen online safety, human-generated content, participatory design, and healthier relationships with technology. I am a postdoctoral alum of Vanderbilt University’s Department of Computer Science, where I worked with Dr. Pam Wisniewski’s Socio-Technical Interaction Research Lab. I continue to write, speak, and research at the intersection of online safety, digital trust, decentralized technology, and youth wellbeing. I was named a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for Data Integrity in 2023. In 2025, I had the honor of serving as President of Division 13 of the American Psychological Association, the Society of Consulting Psychology. I also live with major depressive disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. In 2020, I took a leave from PwC to focus on my mental wellness, and I now speak and write openly about mental health, especially in the workplace and in relation to digital wellbeing. This blog, Seriously Jerk Brain, chronicles much of that journey.
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Would love to start a “Mental Health Mondays” podcast (or even better NPR radio show) modeled after Science Fridays on NPR. Interviews with providers and consumers, authors, updates on the latest research, etc. SO MANY TOPICS that the average person with mental health issues (which is everybody at one point or another) would find really helpful.
Would love to start a “Mental Health Mondays” podcast (or even better NPR radio show) modeled after Science Fridays on NPR. Interviews with providers and consumers, authors, updates on the latest research, etc. SO MANY TOPICS that the average person with mental health issues (which is everybody at one point or another) would find really helpful.
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