The practice lead · Exclusive partnership
Led by someone who has done the work.
Dr Daniel Cooper spent twenty-two years in the Australian Army, most of them in the Special Air Service Regiment. He joined as an infantryman and deployed to East Timor in 1999, passed SASR selection in 2001, and went straight onto the second rotation into Afghanistan in 2002. Over the following fourteen years he conducted dozens of operations across Afghanistan and beyond, serving in all three of the regiment's Sabre Squadrons and its Operations Support Squadron.
In 2008, from inside the regiment, Daniel started what grew into the SASR Human Performance Program. It became the foundation on which Australia's Special Operations Command and the wider Army built their own human performance systems. Alongside his operational role he studied: an undergraduate degree in sports science, a double masters in strength and conditioning, and research into cognitive and physiological performance.
After leaving the regiment, Daniel spent two years with the Queensland Reds high performance program, then took up a full research scholarship at Macquarie University. His PhD examined the human factors that improve the transfer of training into performance in high threat combat environments, and his published research on decision-making and marksmanship under pressure is cited internationally. He still tests his own methods on himself: the 750km Yukon Arctic Ultra on foot, the 550km and 1600km Iditarod Trail Invitationals, and multi-day desert ultras.
Daniel works with Ascendera under an exclusive partnership. In the Kingdom, he works only with our clients, on our engagements, and he leads them personally. When he tells you how leaders and teams behave under real pressure, it is because he has lived it, measured it and researched it.
From the boardroom to the frontline, the standard is the one he set for his own teams.