Executive & Career Coaching + Design Thinking

Daniel Bennett is the founder, CEO, and “Head Coach” at Stepping Stone Group LLC. He is also a Director at the Atlantic Council, a leading international affairs and foreign policy think tank in Washington, DC, and a nonprofit, nonpartisan institution. At the Atlantic Council, Daniel serves as the Director of the Millennium Leadership Program (MLP), the Council’s center for leadership development.

As MLP Director, Daniel manages the Millennium Fellowship – the organization’s flagship “leadership accelerator”. He designs and runs a curriculum that includes executive coaching, Adaptive Leadership, and a range of skill trainings alongside leadership retreats, conferences, and “leadership expeditions” to the front lines of global challenges. In partnership with seasoned subject matter experts, Daniel has supported or led expeditions in over twenty countries since 2011, including to the Syrian border region in Turkey and traversing Southeastern Anatolia and the Aegean Sean focused on migration; Kyiv, Ukraine after the 2016 Revolution of Dignity; through rural Colombia, Bogota, and Medellin after the FARC peace deal; Sarajevo, Bosnia on the 25th Anniversary of the Dayton Accords; Baghdad and Najaf, Iraq after the fall of ISIS; across India and Pakistan to explore cross-border entrepreneurship; and several expeditions throughout Europe and the United States.

Through MLP, he works closely with a diverse array of leaders across business, government, and civil society. Examples from the private sector include executives at Goldman Sachs, Bridgewater, Morgan Stanley, PayPal, Airbus, Raytheon, Edelman, Facebook, Google, Uber, BP, Exxon Mobil, and many others. From the public sector, Daniel has worked with ministers of foreign affairs and finance, mayors, state senators, members of parliament, and senior advisors to heads-of-state and cabinet members. Across civil society, he has worked with nonprofit CEO’s, founders, and entrepreneurs as well as  award-winning artists, authors, scientists and academics. Beyond the fellowship, Daniel oversees the center’s broader agenda of activities including its executive education programs well as the center’s network of 500+ fellows which spans over 80 countries.

Daniel is a graduate from Georgetown’s Institute for Transformational Leadership, holds a Professional Coaching Certification (PCC) equivalent degree in executive coaching with a focus on leadership and career coaching, and is certified in the Leadership Circle assessment. Daniel is also an experienced Design Thinking facilitator certified through the LUMA Institute. Prior to the Atlantic Council, Daniel worked in Cairo, Egypt coordinating youth outreach and advocacy programs during the Arab Spring. He earned his bachelor’s degree in international relations with a minor in Arabic at Tufts University and studied Arabic at the American University in Cairo. Daniel spent 13 years living in six different African Countries and currently resides outside Washington, DC. Outside of leadership development and foreign affairs, Daniel is an amateur horologist and greenhouse enthusiast.