Unlike a physical injury, like a broken bone, there is no scan or test that can be performed to determine healing from major depression. Instead, you have to go off of more intangible elements, like feelings, perception, and emotion. For the first time in a very long time, I feel fully engaged with my life. I’m excited about the future and interested in actively participating in the present.
Given that I’m not currently showing symptoms of depression, my psychiatrist and I decided today to take the next step in my medication taper and go down to 150mg of Wellbutrin once every other day. The drug only comes in two doses and both are extended release, meaning that cutting them in half will not guarantee an equal split of medication and could even potentially produce severe, possibly deadly, side effects. The safest option is to go with the every-other-day method.
We will continue on this course for the next two weeks and then, if all continues to go well, make a decision about whether I try to come off the medication completely. It’s such a slow process, but it’s important that it be. Onward.
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?! 