One aspect of being diagnosed with OCD later in life that I’ve come to appreciate is how it explains past actions that were previously mysterious. It’s helpful in that now I have a reason for what before seemed like an insurmountable character flaw. In this case, I’m specifically thinking about how I react when people send me a message that, regardless of their intention, upsets me.
In my past experience, that feeling of hurt would morph into an intrusive thought. “They don’t care about me,” for instance. And that germ of an idea would take root in my mind and Jerk Brain would cultivate it. It would expand as the hours passed until it overtook everything else in my head, a giant weed choking the delicate seedlings in its midst.
Taking an outsider’s perspective, the original issue was a trifle, perhaps a misunderstanding or a careless rude remark. In my head, it was now a towering redwood. My brain would go into overdrive, obsessing about my response, my retaliation, my parry. It was entirely wasted energy. When the pressure and tension finally reached the boiling point, I would reply, unloading on the other person, much to their surprise. It was Powell Doctrinesque on my part, a show of overwhelming (and ultimately unnecessary) force.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) has equipped me with many tools, but enhanced self- and situational awareness are two of the most important. Working together, these skills allow me to better regulate my responses to stimuli in my environment. Unkind messages still needle me, but my reactions are measured and proportional.
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?! 