When I started out writing this blog back in early January, I had no idea how long I would be at it. Looking back, it doesn’t even seem like it was this year. Then again, pretty much nothing about 2020 has gone as expected. That’s probably the understatement of the week, but I’m going to roll with it for now.
This is my 101st post on this blog and I am still not sure exactly what I’m doing with it. It’s been therapeutic for me to be able to write about my experiences and what’s going on in my head. Transparency is one of my guiding principles for the blog, because I have spent so much of my life play acting, pretending I was doing great when I was anything but.
At the same time, reviewing my previous posts, I see places where I’ve held back or, when it became too much, just stopped sharing altogether (see all of June). Although I have not been a particularly good correspondent, the messages of support and encouragement that I have received through comments to my posts, the Contact page, and on social media have meant the world to me. Thank you for riding with me.
This whole journey is not one that I anticipated, but I am grateful for it. I wonder what post number 202 will look like.
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?! 
One day at a time.
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I am glad you are back blogging. Missed you in June.
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