It’s a curious thing which posts elicit feedback. Generally, most of the people who read this blog seem not to be WordPress users, meaning that I receive comments from them through text, email/Contact page, or sometimes Twitter. It’s funny to me how some of the things I think will generate the most response are met with crickets. In contrast, other pieces that I don’t feel are particularly insightful often resonate with people in unexpected ways.
I’d be interested in knowing what you might like to read from me.
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.
View all posts by liz
Seriously, Jerk Brain?! 
Hi Liz, Big Hugs. I miss getting to occasionally give you a call. So, to your question, i’m reminded of one of the great movies in my opinion (probably the only one) with Peter Sellers in it called “Being There”. It’s the story of Chancy the gardner at a posh estate in the US, again a simple gardener. The owner of the estate as a function with the US president in attendance and the Presidient has a chance encounter with Chancy. He completely misreads Chancy’s comments about being a time for everything, a time to plant, a time to nurture, an time to harvest ect…. as the President thinks Chancy’s talking about the very complex US economy… very profound. Chancy’s comments are so bland and vanilla in nature, all people begin to conclude he is so bloody “deep” he has to make his comments simple for everyone to understand. But Chancy is just a simple gardener offering is thoughts and observantions on various things he sees. Again, all taken to be very, very deep.
You’ve done a lot, seen a lot from a lot of different places, so your “deep thoughts” as a “Chancy the Gardener” would be interesting, which could someday be put in the form of a book, “interesting thoughts/experiences from interesting conversations (such as very interesting comments from a cab driver/black-cab in London), or something you saw ect…stimulation of memories and then commentary like Chancy the Gardener…
LikeLike