Meet Jen

An Interview with Jen, Project Manager

By Jen's Brain

Interviewer: Jen, thanks for sitting down with me. You’ve recently stepped into the role of project manager for what you’ve dubbed, “The Experiment.” For readers just meeting you, how would you describe the role?

Jen: Thanks for having me. How would I describe my role? Well, there are those who say I’m just an uppity woman behaving badly and my role is a spoiler. [Laughs]

Interviewer: Really? And how does that make you feel?

Jen: That depends on whom I’ve managed to offend and whether their comments landed on the front page or were buried on page six. [Laughs]

Interviewer: How would you like to respond to them? The folks whose comments make the front page?

Jen: I’d remind them that well-behaved women rarely make history. [Laughs] Seriously, though, in practical terms, my role is to manage a content and web-based project, with a daily publishing cadence, which implements a cutting-edge treatment model for PTSD [Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder] and DID [Dissociative Identity Disorder]. In human terms, I’m wrangling a very opinionated editorial team, a living website, and a publishing process that doubles as Treatment. The work—writing every day, building and maintaining the site, daily meetings with the treatment team and the committee, both en banc and individually —isn’t extracurricular. It’s the core of the program.

Interviewer: That’s not how most people describe a website.

Jen: No, and that’s intentional. Picture your brain as a computer. You are a carbon based machine with a central processing unit, a memory bank, a camera, a keyboard, a battery, etc. Everything is wired according to a schematic which assures that all the components work together to get the job done.  

When it became clear that my executive functioning output module isn’t wired properly to my input processing component - or, in the case of the physical brain damage, that the wiring is broken - we had to find a way around it. Traditional fixes didn’t work or didn’t stick. Updates and patches were only temporary. 

But the one thing that did stick was building things and telling stories. So instead of fighting that, we formalized it. Instead of replacing the hardware, we’re rewriting the software and updating the drivers.

Interviewer: And you’re now the one managing that process.

Jen: Correct. Somehow I was elected. [Laughs.] Officially, my role is that of project manager. Unofficially, I’m just the head cat herder. My job is to oversee timelines and decision flow, facilitate consensus, and keep the work moving forward without anyone—internally or externally—flipping the table.

Interviewer: You bring a fairly serious résumé to what could sound, on the surface, like a very unconventional setup.

Jen: I do, and that matters. I hold a B.A. from Morgan State University and a J.D. from the University of Maryland Law School. I also have advanced certificates in editing and grant writing from Valdosta State University. Before all of this, I worked in environments where precision, deadlines, and accountability were non-negotiable. That training didn’t disappear just because my brain changed. It adapted.

Interviewer: How does that experience manifest, day to day?

Jen: Law school teaches you how to manage competing arguments without losing the plot. Editing teaches you how to respect voice while imposing structure. Grant writing teaches you how to move complex ideas through rigid systems. All of that translates directly into this role. I oversee the timeline, keep decisions from looping endlessly, and use processing techniques developed in treatment to resolve conflict and move us toward completion.

Interviewer: You’ve been very open about the idea of multiple dissociative identities. How does that factor into leadership?

Jen: Transparency helps. We don’t pretend there’s a single, frictionless voice. There are five of us actively involved, and we don’t agree on much. [Laughs] My job isn’t to silence disagreement; it’s to keep it productive. Writing a daily blog forces executive function whether you feel like you have it or not. You have to choose a topic, sequence ideas, tolerate disagreement, and finish. That’s not procrastination—it’s cognitive physical therapy.

Interviewer: The site itself reflects that process.

Jen: Exactly. If the navigation feels a little odd or the tone shifts from one day to the next, that’s not a flaw—it’s documentation. It’s the process of internal connections being rewired in real time. The website is a workspace, not just a product.

Interviewer: You’ve used the phrase “project manager of the impossible.”

Jen: [Smiles.] It’s tongue-in-cheek, but it’s accurate. This isn’t about efficiency in the Silicon Valley sense. It’s about teaching systems that learned to survive by competing with one another how to collaborate toward a shared goal. Some days it flows beautifully. Some days, not so much. But both days count.

Interviewer: What does success look like for you in this role?

Jen: [Smiles]  Well, I’ve gotten kind of fond of eating on a regular basis. A paycheck would be nice. Seriously, this is about finishing today’s work and publishing, then showing up again tomorrow and the next day to do it all again. Every time we build another piece of this house, we practice being on the same side. That’s the metric that matters. The rest—the site, the writing, the structure—is both the work and the proof that the work is working.

Interviewer: Final question: why take this approach so publicly?

Jen: Because this is where the music is made—in shared, imperfect spaces where people show up as they are. If someone reads this and recognizes their own messy process, or realizes that structure and creativity don’t have to be enemies, then the project is already doing its job. 

Interviewer: Jen, thank you. I appreciate your time.

Jen: Thank you, again, for having me. And seriously—mind the cats.