Neuroplasticity refers to our brain’s ability to change and adapt throughout our lifetime by forming new connections between neurons (i.e., nerve cells) and reorganizing neural pathways. This is important for a lot of reasons, ranging from learning and memory to recovery from brain injury.
Yesterday, I was talking to someone about the importance of neuroplasticity in the context of work, especially in tech. Software developers, designers, and other creatives need to lean into their brains’ abilities to adapt and respond to challenges and tough problems.
It also made me think about its importance to me as it relates to mental health and recovery. It contributes to emotional well-being and mental wellness because, by forming new neural connections and pathways, the brain can adapt to emotional challenges, develop coping strategies, and recover from psychological trauma and stress.
Although I have plenty of unkind things to say about my brain at times—it can be a real jerk—I’m grateful for it’s evolution, adaptation, and regeneration.
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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The late Jimmy Breslin put it best: “I want to thank my brain for remembering me.”
Seriously, Jerk Brain?! 
The late Jimmy Breslin put it best: “I want to thank my brain for remembering me.”
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