Yesterday, I wrote about the power of dreams. Specifically, I was talking about my own dreams and how my renewed ability to dream gives me hope. I also had the opportunity yesterday to witness one of my colleagues, who I am also proud to call my friend, bring one of his dreams closer to reality. His first Kickstarter project (for those who don’t know, KS is a crowdfunding site) met its goal in less than 12 hours. Now, it’s moving on to stretch goals with the aim of expanding the original project. As my grandmother would have said, I am kvelling.
To get to this point, my friend has had to endure. There have been setbacks and disappoints along the way. He’s also spent a lot of time building a community of support.
Lately, I have been struggling with a profound sense of loss related to my professional identity. For so long, I thought that my job gave my life meaning. My identity, and much of my self-esteem and self-image, was predicated on what I did for a living. That life and identity seem so far away right now. I feel exposed and vulnerable. Through therapy I’ve come to realize that much of my struggle with my mental health has come from having my identity so bound up in my work that it left me with nothing for myself. No matter how much I sacrificed or how hard I worked, it would never love me back. It could never be a substitute for loving myself for who I am. Only now am I beginning to be able to define who I am outside of my work.
And that’s part of why watching my friend achieve his dream gives me so much joy. His success is a tangible reminder to me that even though a dream may seem far off, or even feel impossible right now, there is reason for hope and optimism. Put in the work, roll with what comes along the way, and keep moving forward.
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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Beautiful.
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Thank you for these posts, Liz. ❤️
With you in prayer and hope. 🙏
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