Sally Duxfield Joins the Doctor of Applied Neuroscience in Management Program
Sally Duxfield is a Doctor of Applied Neuroscience in Management Candidate. She is an executive performance coach, entrepreneur, and leadership practitioner with over four decades of applied experience across military, commercial, and experiential learning environments. She is the Founder and Director of Makahika Outdoor Pursuits Centre and Arete Retreat in New Zealand, where she designs and delivers immersive leadership programmes focused on behavioural change, decision-making under pressure, and sustained performance. Her work integrates neuroscience-informed principles with experiential pedagogy, creating high-trust, high-challenge environments that enable leaders to translate knowledge into practical, real-world capability.
Her professional background includes distinguished service as a commissioned officer in the Royal New Zealand Air Force, where she held leadership roles in operational and command environments, developing expertise in high-pressure decision-making, team leadership, and strategic execution. She has since built a global profile as a leadership coach and speaker, working with executives, entrepreneurs, and elite sports teams, and contributing to national and international leadership development initiatives. Her approach is characterised by a strong emphasis on experiential learning, physiological awareness, and the integration of stress, recovery, and performance dynamics into leadership practice.
Ms. Duxfield joins the Doctor of Applied Neuroscience in Management (DANM) program at Monarch Business School Switzerland, bringing extensive executive-level experience and a deeply applied perspective on leadership development. Her general area of interest centres on the intersection of neuroscience, experiential learning, and leadership performance, particularly in relation to how individuals learn, adapt, and make decisions in dynamic and high-pressure environments. Her doctoral work is expected to build on this foundation, contributing to the advancement of applied leadership practice through disciplined research grounded in lived professional experience.
Please join us in welcoming Ms. Duxfield to Monarch and to the Doctor of Applied Neuroscience in Management program.
The Monarch Doctoral of Applied Neuroscience in Management Program
Monarch’s Doctor of Applied Neuroscience in Management (DANM) program provides a structured and intellectually rigorous pathway for senior professionals, executives, and leadership practitioners who seek to integrate advances in neuroscience with real-world organisational practice. Designed for candidates operating in complex and high-performance environments, the program enables professionals such as Ms. Sally Duxfield to critically examine leadership, decision-making, stress regulation, and human performance through disciplined inquiry grounded in lived experience.
Rather than separating scientific theory from professional application, the DANM framework invites candidates to draw directly from their experiential knowledge and elevate it into applied research that contributes to both management practice and the emerging field of organisational neuroscience. The program emphasises reflective leadership, neurophysiological awareness, and the development of actionable insights that enhance individual and team performance in dynamic and high-pressure settings.
Rather than separating theory from practice, the D.Man framework invites candidates to draw directly from their lived professional experience and elevate it into applied research that contributes to management knowledge with both practical and ethical relevance. The program emphasises reflective leadership, systems thinking, and the development of actionable insights that inform decision-making within dynamic and high-responsibility settings.
The program is designed in alignment with the principles of the European Qualifications Framework (EQF Level 8), reflecting the highest level of doctoral learning outcomes in terms of knowledge creation, autonomy, and professional impact.
The tuition-based structure supports active professionals who wish to pursue doctoral research without disengaging from their ongoing roles. In this sense, the Doctor of Applied Neuroscience in Management functions not merely as an academic qualification, but as an integrative research platform—one that refines leadership capability, deepens understanding of human performance, and enables the production of principled, practice-oriented scholarship grounded in real-world experience.