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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.

Rain, rain

Coping with anxiety starts with not trying to minimize it.

anxiety, depression, fear, mental health, perspective, pretending, PTSD, recovery, reflections, therapy

Anniversaries

Why I go on.

family, reflections

Tired

Life is exhausting right now. There is still hope.

anger, anxiety, change, covid19, depression, exhaustion, fatigue, fear, future, jerk brain, lessons learned, mental health, OCD, perspective, priorities, psychology, PTSD, recovery, reflections, reframe, rest, self-care, self-regulation, social distancing, therapy, wellness, what to say

Happy hour

Time in community makes a difference.

reflections

Picking sides

Depression is less about swings than it is tension.

anxiety, depression, mental health, recovery

Going to the dogs

My dog is a role model.

Processing

Data, data, data.

anxiety, career, depression, jerk brain, mental health, perspective, psychology, recovery, reflections, self image, therapy

Living out loud

My story matters because it means there is hope.

advice, anxiety, career, change, depression, fear, future, inclusion, jerk brain, job, leadership, lessons learned, medication, mental health, OCD, perspective, pretending, psychology, PTSD, recovery, reflections, self image, therapy, wellness, wisdom, work

A little of this and a little of that

There is no recipe for 2020.

advice, anxiety, change, cooking, covid19, creativity, depression, family, food, future, home, lessons learned, mental health, OCD, perspective, philosophy, psychology, PTSD, recovery, reflections, reframe, therapy, wellness, wisdom

Across the universe

Jai Guru Deva, Om.

anxiety, covid19, future, mental health, reflections

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