In both the literal and figurative senses, I have a microphone. In addition to this blog and my broader presence on social media acting as my metaphorical microphone, I have a beautiful Blue Yeti. It was gifted to me a little over a year ago and I’m embarrassed to say that, although it is out of the box, it isn’t really being used. It sits on my desk. Waiting.
As Julian Meltoff (1998) wrote, “Worthwhile thoughts have not gotten any easier to come by, but it is certainly simpler to record them and to communicate them to others” (p. 7). From time to time, I get ideas about doing some kind of a podcast. Right as I was going on leave, a colleague urged me to start a YouTube channel. It’s only in the last few days that I’ve had the energy or concentration to really contemplate either.
I’m terms of content, my interest is in ending the stigma associated with talking about mental health challenges in the workplace. What I haven’t seen are pods or vlogs by an executive-level business leader talking about their own mental health and leadership.
I want to do something in this space, but I’m not sure what that looks like yet. Something to ponder.
Although the title of this post is a reference to Beck’s 1995 hit, the most recited line from that song and the one that inspired this entry (“I’ve got two turntables and a microphone”) was actually sampled from a 1985 Matronix track, “Needle to the Groove”. Credit where credit is due.
Meltzoff, J. (1998). Critical thinking about research: Psychology and related fields. American Psychological Association.
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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