It’s been a long week. Although I did not attend the conference itself, I traveled to another city to attend events related to it for some consulting work I’m doing. The conference centered around an industry that attracts a lot of young people as both entrepreneurs and employees.
The business development and networking activities surrounding it were predictably loud and ended late. Coupled with an unexpectedly loud thunderstorm that passed through the area just as I was trying to go to sleep, well past my normal bedtime, I just didn’t sleep well last night. I’m home now and looking forward to a good night’s rest.
I feel off today. I’m tired and everything feels a little heavier; ordinary things, like motivating myself to get up and exercise, take more effort. It’s likely due to tiredness.
Sleep plays a crucial role in maintaining our mental health and well-being. It is during sleep that our brain processes and consolidates new memories, restores its energy levels, and flushes out harmful toxins. A lack of quality sleep can lead to various mental health issues, such as depression, anxiety, irritability, and decreased cognitive performance. Sleep deprivation has also been linked to an increased risk of developing serious mental health disorders, such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
I’ve realized just how important it is for me to continue to prioritize sleep as a tool to maintain my mental health.
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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Still there is a lot to learn about sleep. The Navy experimented with a SEAL team to see how little sleep was necessary for efficiency. The results showed two hours REM was enough. Of course, these were extremely motivated young men, in peak physical condition, trained for endurance. For us mortals, more sleep.
Seriously, Jerk Brain?! 
Still there is a lot to learn about sleep. The Navy experimented with a SEAL team to see how little sleep was necessary for efficiency. The results showed two hours REM was enough. Of course, these were extremely motivated young men, in peak physical condition, trained for endurance. For us mortals, more sleep.
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