Visual Coach

All Cogent Language courses are coach-led by Managing Director, Dan Clapper, PMP. 

Clapper has been working in this role with firms in Tokyo for more than 15 years. Clients are major multinational companies in publishing, pharmaceuticals, and online retail, as well as premier engineering firms and conglomerates based in Japan. Most participants have been high-potential members of IT, finance, or marketing teams.

Cogent Language training develops project management know-how for the real world. All of our offerings, while tightly aligned with the PMBOK® Guide, are informed by Clapper's experience in tackling the wicked problems of human resource development in global organizations. For two decades prior to launching his own firm, he designed and deployed learning architectures for NPO, private, and public sector enterprises. For the prestigious international NPO, World Learning, he launched and led a unit that delivered training at six sites across North America, achieved a million dollars of annual revenue in its first few years, and was recognized for its quality by the US Department of Defense. 

His private sector track record includes a ten-year consulting engagement with the world's largest firm at the time. In this effort, he led the development of a global training standard, and he managed project teams, virtual and collocated, rolling it out and using it in fourteen (14) different countries. 

For these challenges, he had been well prepared by prior work in Silicon Valley and Japan. During the early 1990's, he spearheaded Temple University Japan's successful bid to become the lead supplier of corporate language training for a major electronics multinational (a contract that helped launch TUJ's Corporate Education division). Early in his career, Clapper designed some of the first computer-aided instruction in Silicon Valley for at-risk youth. It was for Job Corps programs in academics and vocations, programs that were ranked by the US Department of Labor in 1988 as #1 out of 105 across the US.

Having grown up in "the Valley", Clapper learned to value innovation, collaboration, and user-friendly design early on. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford, impressed by theater, Apple's Macintosh computer, and systems thinking, he went on to earn advanced degrees in literature, language education, and cybernetic systems. These became the academic foundation for more than 30 years of innovative work as an educator, curriculum developer, training manager, and design consultant in project-based learning for global careers.