Can everyone please go on mute?

liz

If there existed a Litany for Video Conferences, I have no doubt that the first petition would include a reference to muting the microphones of non-speaking participants whose background noise contributes to impaired audibility and a wholly excessive amount of distracting spotlighting (that’s what it’s called when someone makes a sound and their video takes center stage even though they aren’t the presenter).

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to mute others and to mute ourselves in the broader context of our society, particularly at this time. There is a lot of background noise and also a lot of unnecessary highlighting of individuals who are not contributing to supporting others or solving the important problems we are facing. We need to be asking ourselves whether the words and actions we put out into the world are helpful and kind or counterproductive and cruel. If the latter, it’s time to mute ourselves. Similarly, if there are those whose voices are being muted by inequity and injustice, it is our responsibility to help them be heard.

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Published by liz

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.

3 Comments

  2. I see that your blog has acquired more followers in a few months than than mine has in nine years. I understand many people are concerned with depression, but I write about Federal taxes. That’s certainly depressing.

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