This train still runs

liz

Over the course of this year, I’ve learned a lot about perseverance. At first, I doubted whether I had the courage and strength to let people see my vulnerabilities. However, I was frustrated and disappointed that I felt so alone.

Although I knew that, potentially, I was opening myself up to scrutiny, judgment, and pity, I also found acceptance, love, and support. For that, I am grateful. One of the great ironies of depression is the way that it can leave you feeling completely alone even when you are surrounded by other people.

I don’t regret my decision to be transparent about my process. If seeing me work through depression, anxiety, PTSD, and OCD and come out well on the other side gives one other person hope in their own struggle, then I will have achieved my goal.

Despite difficult days, I have made tremendous progress toward building my resilience. I no longer doubt whether I will come out stronger and healthier on the other side. This train still runs.

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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.

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