Yesterday, I entered what I think of as the homestretch of my medication taper. Together with my psychiatrist, doing a great job with handling my care via telemedicine, we agreed to decrease my dose of Wellbutrin from 300mg to 150mg a day. In two weeks, we will re-evaluate and decide if I come off completely.
I’m not experiencing the symptoms of depression the way I have been for the last two years. However, the Coronavirus lockdown is causing changes to my routine that are damaging to my nascent mental health. It’s a weird space to be caught in. My motivation isn’t low. I desperately want to be physically active and outwardly engaged, but circumstances don’t allow it. I’m sleeping terribly, unable to fall asleep, often waking up several times in the middle of the night. In the morning, I struggle to get up, stuck in this groggy fog of exhaustion. It’s like I have the physical aspects of depression, but they aren’t coming from my Jerk Brain. I’m not entirely sure what to do with how I feel, because my usual remedies, including running outside, are largely not feasible at the moment. Living in a densely populated urban area, there are few places to run, bike, or walk that are both safe in terms of traffic and also allow me to keep at least six feet of distance with others.
I’m frustrated, but cognizant that I’m also lucky in terms of my circumstances. Nothing about this situation is simple or easy.
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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Seriously, Jerk Brain?! 