Our Commissioners
ACHENA Commissioners bring various work experience and peer leadership skills that are essential to ACHENA’s operations including homeopathy, education, public policy, finance, management, fundraising, outreach and communications. The board is broadly represented by homeopathy school administrators, faculty, students and practitioners, along with administrators or practitioners from various fields, like integrative healthcare or higher education, and public members who support homeopathy. ACHENA aims for equal board representatives from ACHENA-accredited and non-accredited homeopathy schools. Terms of service are three years, with an option to serve two, consecutive terms.
ACHENA has developed and promotes firm neutrality and equity in all deliberations with its board, the schools it serves and community participants. Homeopathy schools depend on ACHENA to help them achieve the voluntary self-study assessments of their educational training program. To help schools succeed in this process, the ACHENA board and its participants must mutually adopt broad and flexible checks and balances in the formulation of all school accreditation policies.
ACHENA Commissioners invite you into this partnership of growth, opportunity and leadership to help sustain the growth of professional homeopathy education. Please review ways to Get Involved!
All set to join ACHENA’s team of volunteers and receive training? Complete the ACHENA Volunteer Application and Disclosures and submit with your CV to info@achena.org

President (2025, 1st Term)
Karen Allen, CCH
Karen Allen CCH is an experienced integrative healthcare practitioner, nationally certified in classical homeopathy. A dramatic family health circumstance prompted her to change careers from software development to health care. After completing the homeopathic program at Pacific Academy of Homeopathic Medicine in San Francisco, she began practicing in 1994. She received her national board certification in homeopathy from the Council for Homeopathic Certification in 1996. For the past decade, her work has been primarily focused on endocrine, reproductive and fertility issues. In 2018 she began the development of Trinity Health Hub as a resource for supporting and expanding homeopathy as an effective and widely available therapeutic option. She maintains a small private practice which is closed to new clients.
She is a recognized and nationally awarded thought leader, whose leadership and teaching has been influential for a generation of homeopaths. In 2015, she received the Henry L Williams Professional Service award from the National Center for Homeopathy. For more detail, read this interview from National Center for Homeopathy 2017.
As an educator, Karen’s training offers a strong emphasis in clinical efficacy, using homeopathy and other integrative therapeutics to broaden practitioner skills.
As an advocate for credentialing within integrative healthcare, Karen served as a board member and past president of the Council for Homeopathic Certification (CHC). In 2013, she was awarded the distinctive Defining Our Profession award from the board of the CHC for contributions to the profession.
From 2012 through 2015, she served as Education Director for Homeopaths without Borders (NA) focusing on establishment of a self sustaining homeopathic profession in Haiti. During 4 trips to Haiti in 2012, she developed and taught the foundational materials for a text that develops the skill set of Homeopathe Communitaire for Haitians.
From 2013 through 2015, Karen served on the Board of Directors for the Integrative Health Policy Consortium( IHPC) as a representative for the National Center for Homeopathy as a Partner for Health. She currently is a member of the IHPC’s biofield committee.

Vice President (2024, 1st term)
Paul Saunders, PhD, ND
Paul Richard Saunders, PhD, ND, graduated from Duke University with a PhD, an ND from Canadian College, and completed a second ND and Homeopathic Medicine Residency at National College in Portland, Oregon over 30 years ago. He uses the full range of naturopathic therapies, enjoys helping patients with unusual cases, and has found homeopathic medicine to be a powerful treatment. Quality academic education and clinical experience are essential to good patient care.

Treasurer (2024, 1st term)
Deb Fox, CCH, RCST, BCPP
Deb is a Classical Certified Homeopath with the Council for Homeopathic Certification, Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapist, and Board-Certified Polarity Therapist. She combines homeopathy, polarity therapy and biodynamic craniosacral therapy to provide a comprehensive model of holistic care to her clients. She is passionate about helping others live meaningful and healthy lives and inspires her clients and students to take control of their health through education. As a former CPA, she has experience with all facets of financial accounting and tax preparation.

Secretary, Education Specialist (2023, 2nd term)
Parker Pracjek, MA, CCH
Following an undergraduate degree in theatre and a Masters degree in Performance Theory from New York University, Parker spent nearly two decades in higher education and the non-profit sector before becoming a classical certified homeopath and western herbalist. She is passionate about applying her background in higher education in service to the homeopathy community. She serves as faculty at the Academy of Homeopathy Education and is a committed student of nature which holds healing potential on all sides.

Commissioner (2024, 2nd term)
Kim Elia
Kim was inspired to study homoeopathy when he read Gandhi’s quote about homœopathy, “homœopathy cures a greater percentage of cases than any other method of treatment. homœopathy is the latest and refined method of treating patients economically and non-violently.” He has been studying homœopathy since 1987 and graduated from the New England School of homœopathy. Kim was in clinical practice with Dr. Paul Herscu, author of The Homeopathic Treatment of Children, Pediatric Constitutional Types.
Kim serves as CEO of WholeHealthNow. He has been instrumental in the creation of WholeHealthNow’s website, a comprehensive free informational resource for students and professionals. He was inspired to create the Historic Homeopathic Timeline, and is responsible for a growing library of recorded interviews and presentations with today’s world renowned homeopaths on a variety of timely and relevant topics. Kim’s intent is to bring the homeopathic community together and to contribute to the training of effective practitioners who will bring homeopathic medicine forward into the mainstream.
Students from around the world have expressed appreciation and admiration for Kim’s superb knowledge of the history of homœopathy, his deep understanding of homeopathic prescribing, and his extensive knowledge of materia medica. He is known for his dynamic and distinctive teaching methods which reflect his immense knowledge of the remedies and his genuine desire to educate everyone about this affordable and effective healing modality.
Kim was the principal instructor and developer of the four year classical homœopathy program at the Hahnemann Academy in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan. He is currently developing new homœopathy projects.

Commissioner (2025, 1st term)
Deanndra Dawn
Deanndra attended school in Calgary at the Western College of Homeopathic Medicine and has been a Certified Classical Homeopath with the CHC since 2020. She operates a private practice in Southern Alberta which implements Holistic Nutrition, Meditation and Yoga along with Homeopathy to offer her patients a range of alternative health modalities. Deanndra is an eternal student who is passionate about advocating for, and advancing, the Homeopathic profession.

Executive Director
Rick Cotroneo, MA, CCH
Rick has been studying and practicing holistic health since 1981. Seeing the connection between body, mind and spirit, he earned a Master’s Degree in Counseling from the Southwestern College in 1985. For the past 28 years, Rick has worked in public health and has made national contributions leading large scale state and national professional development initiatives for health and human services providers in the fields of HIV and viral hepatitis. Rick graduated from the Homeopathy School International in 2010 and maintains a private homeopathy practice in upstate New York. Committed to high quality education for classical homeopaths, Rick served six years on the ACHENA board and served as President from 2014 to 2016. Rick has worked extensively with Native American Medicine People and continues his study of meditation under one of India’s most highly regarded meditation masters, Yug Purush Swami Paramanand of Haridwar. He co-leads a spiritual center that uses indigenous wisdom to promote world peace and individual well-being

Executive Administrator
Amanda Kacuba
Amanda graduated with a degree in Chemistry from Muhlenberg College (2002) and she spent the earlier part of her career working in the pharmaceutical industry. She is a co-founder of a non-profit organization that helped children suffering with chronic illness and helped their parents to discover the impact and power of a functional medicine approach. More recently, in her personal journey, homeopathy brought her family further healing.
Amanda has taught high school Chemistry, indoor cycling and recently began homeschooling her son. She loves yoga, has training in FDN and is working on certification in Reiki and healing touch practices. She views health as having four pillars- mental, emotional, spiritual and physical. They are all connected, and she enjoys studying and learning about this connection.
Advisors
Anna Vakil, Accreditation Advisor
Tosin Abari, Technology Advisor
Venkatesh Venkataramanujam, Technology Advisor
Conflicts of Interest Policies
Self-regulatory oversight is the norm for virtually all professional education in the US, including homeopathy education, and this necessarily involves an inherent Conflict of Interest (COI) for school administrators and faculty who serve on accrediting agencies like
ACHENA. This being the case, ACHENA, like all accrediting agencies, has strong COI policies in place that are strictly implemented and
measured against best practices articulated by the Association of Specialized and Professional Accreditors (ASPA) and the US Department of Education. The ACHENA Board has always been comprised of homeopathy school leaders and educators along with
students, practitioners, and public members.
The following Policies and Disclosures are implemented for all ACHENA Commissioners, Volunteers, Advisors, and staff:
Thank you for supporting ACHENA by getting involved!
Please partner with ACHENA and give generously to help homeopathic education prosper and continue to grow stronger. Your tax-deductible donation supports our mission to improve the quality of homeopathic education programs and improve consumer protection.
ACHENA | 518-477-1416 | executive-director@achena.org
P.O. BOX 517 | 49 ELMWOOD ROAD | SWAMPSCOTT, MA 01907