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Seriously, Jerk Brain?!

Seriously, Jerk Brain?!

"Self-preservation is a full-time occupation." – Ani DiFranco

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Author: 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.

Early to bed

Working on getting more sleep.

anxiety, depression, mental health, recovery, sleep

Correspondence

Recovery from depression has changed how I relate to people.

anxiety, career, change, depression, emotional baggage, emotional intelligence, exhaustion, fatigue, future, hiding, jerk brain, lessons learned, mental health, OCD, perfectionism, perspective, pretending, priorities, psychology, PTSD, recovery, reflections, reframe, self image, self-care, self-regulation, therapy, toxic positivity, wellness

The unknown

Getting better at living with uncertainty.

advice, anxiety, change, covid19, creativity, depression, emotional baggage, emotional intelligence, fatigue, fear, future, job, leadership, lessons learned, mental health, OCD, perspective, philosophy, priorities, psychology, PTSD, recovery, reflections, reframe, self-care, self-regulation, therapy, wellness, wisdom, work

Written out

Back on Monday

Acculturation (part two)

More on the topic of organizational culture.

behavioral economics, business, economy, leadership, lessons learned, phd, psychology, reflections, reframe, research, work

Not up for debate

Making a space where I can just be me.

anxiety, depression, future, mental health, recovery, reflections, therapy

Acculturation

Organizational culture—specifically the Competing Values Framework—informs how I process what I’m learning about myself in therapy.

anxiety, business, career, change, culture, depression, future, job, leadership, lessons learned, mental health, perspective, phd, philosophy, psychology, recovery, reflections, reframe, research, self image, therapy, wisdom, work

I feel the need

Building up resilience to stress is helping me better cope with OCD.

anxiety, depression, future, mental health, OCD, PTSD, recovery, stress

Discomfort

Therapy is tiring, but it also teaches me how to rest.

anxiety, change, depression, emotional baggage, exhaustion, fatigue, future, lessons learned, mental health, perspective, priorities, recovery, reflections, rest, self-care, therapy, wellness

Cutter

Finding a way to boost my mood through biking.

antidepressants, anxiety, depression, exercise, health, mental health, OCD, PTSD, wellness

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