My elder daughter has a field trip today. She’s been bursting with excitement about it for days. Funnily enough, she’s not particularly interested in where the class is going or what they’ll be doing. For her, the novelty and adventure come from the event being a break in her routine. It’s something different, a change of scenery.
Thinking about the build up of her energy around this minor foray into the wider world, I am struck by how much my own perspective has changed since I began my recovery from depression in earnest.
My depression not only thrived on the ordinary and mundane, but tried to convince me that even my usual activities were wholly uninteresting. It stole my sense of wonder and possibly, replacing it with lethargy and disconnection. In the full grip of depression, I wasn’t sad. I felt absolutely nothing.
For that reason, I love seeing my daughter excited for her grand day out, knowing she is embracing life. And, witnessing her reaction, I see my own joy at exploration.
As Auntie Mame said, “Life’s a banquet, and most people are simply starving.” I feel well fed.
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?! 