Everyday, I am learning to accept the commentary that is offered to me as data points for review rather than statements of my worth. It seems simple and obvious, but for a long time it wasn’t for me. We are all scholars of ourselves, collecting and analyzing information to inform our actions. How we critically evaluate that data determines our ability to develop from it.
Yesterday, my dissertation committee chair sent me his comments on my thesis proposal. There were a lot. However, none of them suggested substantive changes to my work. They are reflections, prompts to delve deeper, ideas for additional or alternative sources to cite, and a few notes of typos. As I think back to my previous reactions to feedback–almost all negative in terms of how I internalized them and used them to beat myself up–I’m grateful for my response in this moment.
I recognize it as growth.
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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Seriously, Jerk Brain?! 
I’ve long heard that misery loves company. Of course the truth is there is power in company along side, while the journey. Thanks Liz.
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Remember H. G. Wells: “There is no passion, neither love nor hate, equal to the passion for altering someone else’s draft.”
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