Not a problem

liz

For the longest time, I would decry my schedule and say that I had to find a way to work less.

However, I didn’t have to find a way to work less, I had to reprioritize my time. I was upset because I wanted to have my cake and eat it too. The professional services industry has normalized working around the clock. The expectation is that we are always “on”.

Before, I couldn’t figure out how to stop working so much because I didn’t really want to. If I had wanted to, I would have done it. I’d have canceled calls and meetings. I’d have delegated them to someone else who wouldn’t do them right (and by that I mean they wouldn’t do them the same way as I would, which isn’t necessarily wrong, but I needed to control things). In truth, I already had my answer. If I’d wanted to stop, I would have stopped. By packing my schedule, I avoided having to sit still long enough to recognize just how not well I was feeling.

It took me a year of intense therapy and practicing rigorous honesty with myself to admit that I didn’t have problems. I had solutions I didn’t like.

Now, instead of solutions that make me uncomfortable, I have awareness of how I am feeling, understanding of what’s driving those feelings, and an appreciation of my power to adjust my behavior accordingly.

I like that answer.

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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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