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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.

Strangers on the internet

Old habits meet new awareness.

lessons learned, mental health, reflections, self image

Make it make sense

It makes sense that we like it when things make sense.

anxiety, depression, HOMS, mental health, OCD, podcast, recovery, reflections

Fission products

Different emotions produce different responses. Some stick around a while.

anxiety, depression, mental health, self image

Irrelevant difference

Are people at work treating me differently because of my transparency about my mental health journey?

anxiety, career, depression, mental health, pretending, recovery, reflections, reframe, self image, therapy

Friday I’m in love

There isn’t a cure and there’s still hope.

depression, future, mental health, perspective, recovery, reflections

Play it again, Sam

As I tell my story again and again, I see the progress I’ve made.

career, depression, mental health, recovery, reflections, self image

What a difference

After a year, I’m back to work and back to living.

anxiety, career, depression, future, mental health, recovery

A big week

A series of fortunate events.

anxiety, business, career, change, depression, diversity, emotional intelligence, fear, future, jerk brain, job, leadership, lessons learned, medication, mental health, OCD, perspective, phd, podcast, priorities, psychology, PTSD, recovery, reflections, self image, therapy, wellness, work

Pulling back

I’m managing my energy to take care of myself.

anxiety, depression, lessons learned, mental health, OCD, perspective, PTSD, recovery, reflections

Validity

Working on my dissertation proposal edits and learning how to define success for myself.

anxiety, depression, lessons learned, mental health, OCD, perspective, phd, psychology, PTSD, recovery, reflections, reframe, research, self image, therapy

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