During our last session, I talked to my therapist about my habit of eating the same things for breakfast and lunch everyday. I worried that it might be a compulsive behavior, another sign of disordered eating.
What my therapist helped me to do was dissect the situation. What’s behind my food choices at breakfast and lunch? Mornings in my house are busy. That’s when I fit in my workouts before rousting my school-age children out of bed and getting them ready for school. It’s easiest for me to have a go-to breakfast that I like and which makes sure that I start my day with something nutritious rather than whatever I grab before my first meeting.
Lunch is a similar story. In years past, I wouldn’t always have lunch, choosing instead to continue working or having something from a vending machine in the late afternoon. It wasn’t healthy and it didn’t help me thrive. Now, I eat at roughly the same time everyday and I know that what I’m having is balanced and filling.
When you’re used to your urges and habits being perennially unhealthy, it can be hard to recognize and accept that new ones are generative and sustainable. As my therapist pointed out, I’m fortunate that I don’t mind repetition when it comes to food. She also pointed out that I’m not rigid about my daily choices. If I’m on vacation or if I meet a friend for breakfast or lunch, I do not worry that I’m deviating from my usual meal plan.
I continue to work on reminding myself that not every repetitive behavior is a symptom.
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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“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Sigmund Freud
Seriously, Jerk Brain?! 
“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Sigmund Freud
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