Lisa Lindeman, Ph.D.
Second Haven was built by Lisa Lindeman, who manages the Minecraft and Discord servers. Lisa earned her BA in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1999. At Berkeley, she studied the relationship between cognition, emotion, and physical health. The profound overlap between physical health and emotional well-being informed the choice of target audiences for Second Haven (chronic conditions that are physical, psychological, or both). At the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she earned her doctorate, she established an independent lab to study the role of conceptual metaphor and embodied cognition in generating emotional experience.
Between 2010 and 2020, she worked for multiple non-profit organizations dedicated to supporting the emotional development and well-being of children and adolescents. For seven years, she was the Director of Research at Prime Time, a non-profit in Palm Beach County, Florida, where she evaluated 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, 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 (primarily myalgic encephalomyelitis, or chronic fatigue syndrome, and postural orthostatic tachycardia).
(Her username, MomLisa, comes from her Minecraft beginnings: playing with her two sons when they were young.)
