Turn it in

liz

Yesterday afternoon, I sent my thesis proposal to my dissertation committee chair. This is a big deal. Although programs and disciplines differ, my school’s Organizational Leadership PhD program calls for students to submit and defend the first three (out of an eventual five) chapters of their dissertation prior to collecting, analyzing, and reporting on their data. The first chapter provides an overview of the project, the second reviews the literature on the proposed topic and highlights trends and avenues for potential future inquiry (i.e., the dissertation), and the third chapter explains the selected methodology and method.

With all the references, my proposal weighs in at 31,046 words, the equivalent of about 138 double-spaced pages in Word. Although the writing of it “only” took me three months, I spent two years trying to come up with a topic and identify a central research question. I did a lot of intellectual wandering.

Now, I wait and see what comments and proposed revisions my advisor has for me. Even though I know there is a lot of work ahead, this is a good way to end the week.

Happy Labor Day, y’all.

Unknown's avatar

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.

5 Comments

  4. Congratulations! This is a big deal in so many ways and one big accomplishment for those not faint of heart. I know you have watched others go through this process. As I watched Alicia go through her journey, I was not prepared for the negative feedback at all steps in her writing which eventually resulted in a paper she and her committee were satisfied with and she was proud of. She was so happy and proud after her dissertation defense to be Dr. Kerr. I know you will be too. I also learned to appreciate the many ABDs out there. It really is an act of courage to put yourself on the line like that.

    Like

    Reply

Leave a comment