One of the consulting projects I’m working on right now involves the creation of short explainer videos that educate the watcher about a topic relevant to the company. Although I’m not responsible for creating the final version (there are talented designers for that, thankfully), I’m creating the underlying content and narrative, which means that I have to make a rough prototype. The purpose of my draft video is to give the designers direction and a sense of the look and feel we are going for.
It’s a humbling process, as I clumsily click and move pictures and text around the screen, adding my voiceover and then adjusting to get the timing to align. This isn’t anything I’ve ever studied in school. I’m entirely self-taught via YouTube instructional videos.
And it’s something I’m proud of myself for doing. The feedback has been very positive, because the substance is there. The form just needs some professional help.
As someone who has spent an inordinate amount of her life worrying about form, whether it be body image or professional status, it’s refreshing to focus on what lies beneath, what really matters.
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?! 
Thank you very much for sharing!
Sent from my iPhone
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