Give me a minute

liz

One of the many lies Jerk Brain tells is that I am a burden on the people who love and care about me, my mere existence an inconvenience of epic proportions. At the same time, in a cruel and clever twist, my primary love language—regardless of whether the relationship is platonic or romantic—is acts of service. In other words, I feel the most loved when someone intentionally does something kind for me that they don’t have to do. Running a close second is quality time.

As I reflect on the last two weeks, I’m struck by just how much folks put themselves out for me. It’s a toss up as to which is more unpleasant, driving someone from the airport to the Melbourne CBD during rush hour or removing your own kidney with a dull spoon. The struggle is real.

Busy people made heaps of time for me. Real time, quality time. They opened their homes to me; they met up at my favorite places. They let me pet their dogs and snuggle their babies.

As someone who has spent so much of my life discounting my worth, it is affirming. Hovering on the perimeter, I recognize the specter of Jerk Brain. The tinge of awkwardness and uncertainty. Allowing myself to believe in the authenticity of others’ care for me is a measure of growth that once seemed out of reach.

I feel very loved. I feel it in my bones.

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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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