Dr. Damian Cotchett

Damian Cotchett gained a Bachelor Behavioural Sciences (Honours) from La Trobe University; a Masters of Applied Psychology from the University of Melbourne and a Ph.D. from Monash University. After graduating from La Trobe University Damian worked in the areas of organisational development and change management in the Victorian public sector whilst also completing his Masters of Applied Psychology. 

Damian worked for one of Australia’s Big Four Banks where he performed a range of Executive Global HR roles focusing on businesses experiencing significant growth and transformation. This period of time saw this big four Bank  become one of Australia’s most sought after employers to work and one of Australia’s leading growth businesses. Some of his achievements in organisational and transformational change included:

• designed and implemented a global talent program that saw the recruitment and development of many of the bank’s high performing senior leaders
• established and led the change management practice for its Australian Division Investment Program – applied clear standards of practice and dedicated change management plans for the portfolio of strategic projects 
• led the change management program in the move of their Consumer Bank to global lines of business, creating greater capability for the organisation to leverage expertise across multiple geographies resulting in several new business operations across Asia
• member of the pilot group that implemented one of Australia and New Zealand’s biggest change transformations “Break Out” that enabled this top four banks to shift its culture and become a leading growth organisation in financial services.

Damian expanded his focus to consumer psychology and in particular customer experience and customer-centric cultures. Over the last 15 years Damian has worked in management consultancy and large corporates including financial services, utilities, higher education and human services. Examples of his work with organisations include:

• worked with one of the Big Four Banks on their multi-channel customer experience strategy and plans that saw them move from being #4 to #1 in customer satisfaction ratings and rankings transforming the culture to being customer first
• worked with one of Australia’s leading energy providers where he designed it’s Customer Experience Program that articulated the vision, strategic direction and tactical roadmap required to make AGL one of Australia’s leading service organisations building and embedding core customer experience capabilities embedding contemporary customer research techniques, design thinking, customer journey event mapping, service design delivery, integrated CX measurement practice and CX ROI analysis
• Worked with one of Australia’s largest universities to develop a student experience strategy and set of targeted student satisfaction initiatives that provided clarity and focus on the most important actions the University needed to take to improve their performance.

Damian has been actively involved with the Australian Psychological Society (APS). He has held several positions with the College of Organisational Psychologists including National Chair, Secretary and Member Services as well as being on the Committee of the Victorian Branch of the APS. In 2016, he co-founded the Consumer Psychology Interest Group – a professional group committed to growing the understanding and application of consumer psychology theories, models, principles and practices.