The Institute for Human Community (IHC) is a grassroots organization led by disability advocate, Kristina Kapp (known as “KK”). IHC seeks to help people who experience physical or psychological pain and suffering by creating opportunities to build supportive, compassionate, non-judgmental communities.
Pain and disability, whether visible or invisible, can be extremely isolating. Yet social connection plays a major role in healing. The sad irony is that when we need social connection the most, we have the hardest time finding it.
IHC will offer trainings to people interested in creating supportive communities, including virtual groups using tools such as Zoom, Discord, and immersive spaces like Minecraft.
The Team
Kristina Kapp (KK)
KK has actively worked in behavioral health, disability justice, and advocacy for over 20 years as a community activist and humanitarian ambassador. KK has spent the most recent 5-10 years developing and expanding Options for mental health support in Ohio, where she has trained hundreds of certified Peer Support Specialists and established vital community programs, including holistic transitional and rehabilitative supports, to achieve tenured community living necessary for empowered personal recovery.
KK graciously Chairs Ohio’s federally mandated Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness (PAIMI) Advisory Council (PAC), while concurrently serving as a voting member of the governing board of directors of Disability Rights Ohio (DRO) Ohio’s federally mandated Protection and Advocacy Agency. Outside of Ohio, KK’s national organizing activities are largely anchored between projects in her role as Vice President of the National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy (NARPA) and related to her expanding duties as President of the Board of Directors of MindFreedom International (MFI), which she is honored to serve. In addition to the aforementioned ongoing affiliations, KK is the founding member of the Steering Committees behind Liberators for Justice (L4J), Survivors And Families Empowered 4 Recovery (S.A.F.E), and a founding force behind the Mental Health Subcommittee of the National Council on Independent Living (NCIL).
Lisa Lindeman, Ph.D.
Dr. Lindeman earned her BA in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1999. At Berkeley, she studied the nature of conceptual thought in courses with Eleanor Rosch, George Lakoff, and other explorers of our inner world. Her primary interest was the relationship between thoughts and emotions, particularly as they arise across different modes of consciousness.
At the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she earned her doctorate, she set up an independent lab to study the role of conceptual metaphor and embodied cognition in generating emotional experience. Her dissertation explored a potential developmental pathway for embodied concepts. How do we learn, for example, that excessively difficult work is a burden… and even feels subjectively heavy, as though we were carrying an actual weight?
Between 2010 and 2020, she worked for several non-profit organizations dedicated to supporting the emotional development and well-being of children and adolescents. For about seven years, she was the Director of Research at Prime Time, a non-profit in Palm Beach County, Florida, where she studied the impact of supportive adults and high-quality social settings on the social and emotional well-being of children.
After leaving Prime Time, she became a research consultant for the Palm Health Foundation, Youth Speak Out International, and QTurn, researchers and thought leaders that offer support and education to children and youth across the country.
After 2020, she developed long COVID, and in 2022, was diagnosed with Stage III cancer. She is currently in remission but continues to cope with complex, chronic illness (ME/CFS and POTS).
Dr. Lindeman is the creator and admin for the Minecraft community, Second Haven.
