Inside out

liz

I participated in an activity today that made real the baggage we carry around inside of us. The purpose of the exercise was to give participants a tangible example of the weight (expressed as rocks and bean bags) of the aspects of our lives that may go unseen and unspoken at work but are still present.

It’s an important reminder. Everyone we meet is fighting a battle we know nothing about. We are icebergs and what is floating above the surface is only a glimpse at what lies beneath.

What resonated most for me, though, was my answer to the question of what I keep hidden that weighs on me. Before I started my recovery, the backpack would have been unable to contain that weight. As I thought about it today, I realized that the heaviest weight I had ever carried is gone. In its place is a feather.

This experience was powerful for me because it provided a unique and powerful perspective on the energy and peace I have gained since that weight was removed. In its place is a lightness I didn’t know was possible.

It is liberating.

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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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