The Onion is a satirical newspaper that proclaims itself to be America’s finest news source. More often than not, it’s humor hits the mark in ways that evoke awareness on the part of the reader. For me, the stories frequently feel like personal attacks, because they are so relatable.
Several years ago, The Onion published a story under the headline “Plan To Straighten Out Entire Life During Weeklong Vacation Yields Mixed Results”. In the piece, a local man lamented that he failed to sort his entire life out in a week, despite the best of intentions. The article resonates with me.
What I’ve learned is to focus on small steps that make me proud of my effort. Giant leaps feel great, but they’re rare and not sustainable.
If I find my mind wandering to the things that don’t help me feel well, I remind myself that I don’t have to spend my time and energy this way and refocus on the moment. I’ve tried to let go of the guilt I put on myself for not being perfect. It’s natural to have trouble letting go of things that upset us.
If I can’t let something go, I spend a moment with that feeling and understand why it’s pulling me in. Then I give myself permission to set it aside and come back to it later.
I won’t get my life together in a weekend. However, I am growing into a better version of myself everyday.
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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1 Comment
You need to rename this. You are so past jerk brain. I used to write it on toilet paper and flush it like the sh*t it was.
Seriously, Jerk Brain?! 
You need to rename this. You are so past jerk brain. I used to write it on toilet paper and flush it like the sh*t it was.
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