One of the more humbling aspects of my ongoing treatment for Major Depressive Disorder (I mean, even the name itself is a total drag) involves coming to terms with its various manifestations that interfere with my day-to-day life. The way in which it affects my concentration is especially upsetting to me. I’ve always prided myself on my ability to single-mindedly focus on a task. Whether it was reading, writing, or some other exercise, I could narrow my focus, eliminate distractions, and get it done. This bout of depression has taken that away from me, at least for now. Staying on task and maintaining my attention span feels impossible at times.
Recent studies have emphasized the historical lack of attention (sorry…) given to cognitive impairments, especially concentration, in patients with MDD. They note that, in the past, clinical studies have shown that the medication I recently restarted, Wellbutrin (i.e., bupropion), can help MDD patients with their cognitive function, including concentration. Because there is a ramp up period with psychiatric medication, the dose I am taking is lower than that proven effective in the research. Still, I am hopeful.
I find the challenge of maintaining my concentration to be among the most frustrating aspects of MDD. It leaves me feeling painfully unproductive. Productivity, measured by my utilization and revenue generation, has been the primary metric by which I have evaluated my worth as a human being for years. It is hard, but necessary, to unlearn it.
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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1 Comment
A computer has better utilization and revenue production than any human being. So why are we competing with them? A computer can do nothing unless a human being tells it what to do. And since when do utilization and revenue production define a person? Does anyone choose a friend, a spouse, or a teacher based on those metrics? If anyone does, I don’t want to know them.
Seriously, Jerk Brain?! 
A computer has better utilization and revenue production than any human being. So why are we competing with them? A computer can do nothing unless a human being tells it what to do. And since when do utilization and revenue production define a person? Does anyone choose a friend, a spouse, or a teacher based on those metrics? If anyone does, I don’t want to know them.
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