Our Vision

By educating and showing families how to choose and/or make safe medicine, we hope to bring more people success when using these natural botanical therapies.  When we first started on this journey ourselves, we noticed a lack of information regarding this sort of treatment option for autism.  Relying on others, we were able to find success, but it took a lot of time and research.  We hope to help others find their way to success without so many hurdles.

Our Story

We are just two moms who happened to meet on social media at the beginning of our own journeys of treating our autistic children with cannabis.  Realizing how hard it was to navigate all of the information about safer, alternative treatments, we decided to start holding local meetings to help families learn more and we once again turned to social media as a way to keep in touch with our new autism family members.

As word spread and more and more members joined our cyber support group from all over the world, we discovered how little information is readily available when it comes to treating autism with cannabis, so we started to focus even more on education, learning and teaching different methods of administration, communicating directly with families to look for usage patterns based on individual need and their ultimate success, and probably most importantly… just becoming a resource and community that they can count on.

We are proud to say we have the largest known virtual autism/cannabis community of this kind on social media!  Two years later, Whole Plant Access for Autism became a non-profit, hoping to continue helping others on their own journeys and writing their own success stories.

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Meet the Founders/Directors

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Rhonda Moeller

CEO/Co-Founder 

Rhonda is the mother of 2 children, one of which is on the autism spectrum.  Born and raised in California, she graduated valedictorian of her high school class and received a full scholarship to attend Cal State University, Long Beach. Graduating Magna Cum Laude with her BS in Biochemistry, Rhonda went on to attend UC, Irvine for her Ph.D. in Structural Biology.  Three years into her Ph.D. program, Rhonda decided to put the Ph.D. program on hold as she joined the workforce as Quality Control Manager at a local environmental chemistry laboratory.

After working in the lab for 10 years, Rhonda decided to leave her position as QCM and work part-time in order to spend more time with her daughter who needed more support.  When it came time to consider medicating her child, she knew that pharmaceuticals with their side effects were not going to be an option.  So, she began to research alternative biomedical options and being in California, cannabis came up as a suggestion by another family. In January 2016, she got a recommendation from a doctor for her daughter and was amazed by the results.

Once she began to discuss using cannabis with other families, it became obvious that her background in science was an asset to helping others understand how this type of treatment can help where other’s hands were often tied.  From there Whole Plant Access for Autism (WPA4A) was formed as a local support group.  As WPA4A began to grow outside the local California area and began to require more time and monetary support, the 501(c)(3) was formed in order to better serve the community.

Jenni Mai

President/Co-Founder

Jenni is the mother of three adult/teen sons on the Autism spectrum.  She is originally from Wisconsin and now lives in Southern California.  Jenni and her husband jumped at the chance to move to a medicinally-legal alternative botanical state in order to try the treatment on her middle son, Nate, who had an extremely difficult time managing severely aggressive and self-injurious behaviors with traditional pharmaceuticals.

This type of treatment was the only option left to try in the family’s pursuit to keep him safe and out of alternative placement.  Thankfully it has been a huge success in not only reducing these behaviors almost to the point of complete elimination but in the total removal of psychotropic pharmaceuticals as well.  At one point, Nate was taking 18 pills every single day, including extremely heavy doses of Benzodiazepines.  Now he only uses a natural plant with far greater success and continues to happily reside in his family home.  Jenni now helps other families write their own success stories with medicinal botanicals and specializes in helping those with extreme behaviors.

Jenni received her undergraduate degree from Southeast Missouri State University and her Master of Science in Nonprofit Administration from Louisiana State University – Shreveport.  She hopes to apply her education and real-world experience as a parent who has spent decades searching for safe and effective treatment options for her own children, to help others on the same journey.

Jody Schiltz

Director of Education and Outreach

Jody is the mother of one child, a son with a diagnosis of Aspergers and Tourette’s along with
comorbid conditions of anxiety, ADHD, and OCD. Born in California, Jody has lived in several states, OR, TX, WA, and currently resides in GA.

Jody graduated from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo in 1988 with a
degree in Animal Science and a concentration in Reproductive Medicine. Specializing in male
infertility, her first career was as a lab technician for several of the premier infertility specialists
in the Los Angeles area. After 5 years in the infertility field, she changed careers. Jody became an Emergency Medical Technician and worked as the Set Medic in the film industry in Los Angeles. In 2000 she met her future husband and they had their son in 2004 and later moved to GA in 2007. Their son was almost 3 when the signs of his conditions were beginning to show. He received his first diagnosis, PDD, when he was 3 1/2. This started the long and endless journey of doctors, labs, testing, and a variety of pharmaceuticals. Their son was doing okay, but like any parent, Jody wanted more for him.

In February 2018, Jody began to educate herself on how to use medical cannabis to treat their son
and she was very fortunate to find Whole Plant Access for Autism at the start. With their guidance
and educational resources, she was able to learn and make the right decisions to successfully wean,
with her son’s psychiatrist’s guidance, their son off all six of his pharmaceuticals. He now only
uses medical cannabis for his diagnosis. Through her experience with her son, Jody realized that she wanted to help others learn how to use medical cannabis successfully. She joined the WPA4A team in August 2018 and loves helping to educate families.