How ICONIC Board ensures every credentialing decision is objective, independent, and evaluated against published standards — regardless of education pathway.
ICONIC Board credentials professional practice standards independently of any education provider. The Board is not a school, a modality association, or a product of any single training organization. It is an independent credentialing body — structurally separate from the entities that prepare practitioners for credentialing.
Credentialing decisions are based exclusively on:
Published eligibility standards — criteria documented in the ICONIC Board Credentialing Standards, available at iconic-board.polsia.app/accreditation-standards;
Documented practice hours — verified hours of active client-facing holistic health practice at or above the threshold for each credential tier; and
Ethics acknowledgment — signed attestation of compliance with the ICONIC Board Code of Ethics & Professional Conduct.
No education provider — including any institution, school, or training program with which ICONIC Board leadership holds a faculty, directorial, or affiliate relationship — receives preferential treatment in the credentialing evaluation process. Applications are assessed against the same published criteria regardless of the education pathway through which an applicant fulfilled their training requirements.
"ICONIC Board exists to credential the practitioner and their demonstrated practice — not the training pathway they took to get there. The standard is the standard for everyone."
Dr. LaVeena B. Archers serves in two professional capacities that create a disclosed, managed conflict of interest. She is simultaneously:
Founder & Executive Director of ICONIC Board — the credentialing authority responsible for setting standards, overseeing applications, and issuing credentials; and
An IHDS Independent Teacher — an authorized trainer of Living Your Design Guides and Analysts within the Human Design System, whose program graduates may seek ICONIC Board credentials.
This dual role is disclosed publicly and managed through a formal recusal policy. The following procedures are in place and observed for all applications that involve Dr. LaVeena's direct students:
Independent Credentialing Reviewer
Applications from practitioners who completed Human Design training directly under Dr. LaVeena's instruction are reviewed by an independent credentialing reviewer — a qualified evaluator with no professional relationship to Dr. LaVeena's teaching activities.
Mandatory Recusal from Direct-Student Decisions
Dr. LaVeena recuses herself entirely from credentialing decisions — approvals, deferrals, and rejections — involving practitioners she has directly trained or supervised. This recusal is documented in the application record.
Uniform Published Standards
All applicants — regardless of whether they trained under Dr. LaVeena, through a third-party IHDS provider, or through any other recognized Human Design education pathway — are evaluated against the same published eligibility requirements. No pathway receives preferential hour weighting, waiver of requirements, or fast-tracked review.
D.N.M., CEC, D.H.F.M., IBC-HHP™, BCFM
Founder & Executive Director — ICONIC Board of Holistic Health
IHDS Independent Teacher — Living Your Design Guides & Analysts
Teaching and credentialing are financially distinct activities. ICONIC Board does not benefit from directing applicants toward any particular education provider.
Tuition and program fees collected for Human Design training, Living Your Design courses, and IHDS Teacher training flow to Dr. LaVeena's separate teaching practice — not to ICONIC Board. ICONIC Board has no financial interest in which education provider an applicant chooses.
Application and credentialing fees collected by ICONIC Board fund Board operations exclusively: standards development, application review, the public practitioner directory, continuing education oversight, and credential maintenance infrastructure. These funds are not distributed to any education provider or teaching affiliate.
The revenue separation between teaching services and credentialing services means ICONIC Board has no financial incentive to issue credentials to unqualified practitioners, nor any incentive to favor applicants from any particular training pathway. Credential issuance is governed by standards compliance — not by revenue generation or institutional relationships.
ICONIC Board credentials carry professional obligations. Every credentialed practitioner is accountable to the following standards as a condition of credential maintenance.
Credentialed practitioners are required to uphold the ICONIC Board Code of Ethics & Professional Conduct in all client-facing activities. This includes honesty in representations of credentials, qualifications, and scope of practice. The full Code is published at iconic-board.polsia.app/ethics.
Practitioners may not represent ICONIC credentials as licensing, medical authorization, or insurance billing credentials. Holistic health practice operates within a distinct professional scope, and ICONIC credentials define mastery within that scope — not equivalency to licensed medical practice.
Client information, session content, and personally identifying data collected in the course of holistic health practice must be handled with strict confidentiality. Practitioners may not disclose client information without express consent, except as required by applicable law.
Credentials are maintained through annual continuing education. Practitioners must complete the required CE hours documented through an approved provider and submit renewal attestation each calendar year. Credentials that lapse for non-compliance are suspended until requirements are fulfilled.
Every application follows the same documented evaluation sequence. Objectivity is structural — the same published criteria applied to every candidate, reviewed by qualified evaluators, with a documented decision trail.
The applicant submits all required documentation: education credentials, verified practice hours, professional references where applicable, and a signed ethics attestation. Applications are acknowledged with a unique application reference number.
Submitted education credentials are verified against issuing institutions. For Human Design credentials, training hours are confirmed against the relevant IHDS or independent teacher records. No pathway receives preferential treatment in this verification step.
Documented client-facing practice hours are reviewed against published tier requirements. Applications involving Dr. LaVeena's direct students are assigned to an independent reviewer at this stage. The review documents the outcome against the published standard.
The signed ethics attestation is confirmed as received and reviewed. Applicants who have previously been subject to professional disciplinary action are required to disclose this; the disclosure is evaluated on its facts against published criteria.
Applicants who satisfy all eligibility requirements receive a unique credential number, a digital badge, and a QR-verified certificate. The credential is registered in the public ICONIC practitioner directory and is immediately verifiable by any member of the public.
Evaluators assess documentation against published criteria only. Reviewer identity for each application is documented. No credential is issued or denied on the basis of evaluator discretion outside published standards.
Applications that do not meet eligibility criteria receive a written explanation identifying the specific deficiency. Applicants are eligible to reapply once the deficiency is addressed. A formal appeals process is available for applicants who believe criteria were misapplied.
Every credentialing decision — approval, deferral, or rejection — is documented with the evaluator's finding, the criteria applied, and the date of decision. These records are retained and available for review in the event of an appeal.
When the recusal policy is triggered (applications from Dr. LaVeena's direct students), the recusal is noted in the application record. The independent reviewer's identity and qualification are documented.
Governance structures evolve as organizations grow. ICONIC Board is transparent about its current governance stage and the trajectory toward independent multi-stakeholder oversight.
ICONIC Board operates under Executive Director oversight with published credentialing standards, a formal recusal policy, and documented conflict-of-interest management. All credentialing decisions follow a documented review process with independent review triggered when the recusal policy applies.
As practitioner volume and institutional relationships grow, ICONIC Board will seat an independent Advisory Board comprising distinguished practitioners, educators, and researchers with no financial affiliation to any education provider associated with ICONIC credentialing pathways. The Advisory Board will provide oversight of standards updates and ethics proceedings.
Consistent with professional association best practices — and the governance models of institutions like SHRM, PMI, and the National Board of Health & Wellness Coaching — ICONIC Board will establish a formal Board of Directors with fiduciary responsibility, independent member representation, and transparent term governance. This structure creates institutional accountability beyond the founding leadership and positions ICONIC Board for long-term credibility.
ICONIC Board credentials are earned through documented mastery — not through who you know or where you trained. Read the published credentialing standards, or start your application.