Kancho Dan S. Soller
Founder
PHOENIX KARATE-DO ASSOCIATION KYOKUSHINKAI INTERNATIONAL
DAN S. SOLLER is the Founder of the Phoenix Karate-do Association Kyokushinkai International, one of the oldest active Kyokushin organizations based in the USA. He continues to serve the organization as the Kancho ,"head of the house". A world class instructor, he enjoys an exceptional reputation with students around the globe.
Beginning the Kyokushin style in the early 1970s Kancho Soller went on to organize karate in the USA before spreading his Phoenix Way of Kyokushin around the world. His boutique association has grown to a comprehensive organization based on training in the budo tradition, exceptional curriculum, organizational acumen, charity giving, and community development.
The organization, often citied as both traditional and contemporary in its realistic style of training, is powerful, generational and relationship oriented, giving it an independence that allows it to set its own exacting standards and rules.
Soller is known for his charismatic demeanor, teaching integrity and powerful dojo presence. He promotes the traditional and educational values of karate by emphasizing his students' development and human potential. Kancho Soller has trained in the Kyokushin style for over fifty-five years. He continues to train and teach in his dojo while leading numerous karate events throughout the year. His many senior students have trained with him for decades and often speak of his inspirational leadership.
He is the author of four books: The Phoenix Way of Kyokushin Karate Master Text (2025), Phoenix Budo~ The Phoenix Way of Kyokushin Karate (2013), Sun & Moon, My Path of the Phoenix Way of Kyokushin Karate (2012) and Phoenix Way - Kyokushin Karate (Millennium Edition 2000; second printing 2006).
Soller established the association's popular annual summer training program, Camp Phoenix in 1983. With the generous support and encouragement of the Joyce and Nicholas Codispoti Foundation, he founded the PhoenixRiSE Charity Benefit. The Charity Benefit has donated to causes in need including Summer Olympics, international orphanages, family foundations, student scholarships, and international and national charities and non-profits.
Widely traveled and educated, Soller earned academic degrees in the USA from Southern Illinois University, James Madison University and Richard Bland College of the College of William & Mary. His academic emphasis was on political science, kinesiology and administration. Having a long and successful professional career in academics and non-profits, he has served numerous terms as board chair, president, executive vice president and other leadership roles. Soller has earned numerous awards, recognitions and accolades during his professional and karate career, and continues to serve as counsel to others.
In his youth Soller shined in baseball and softball, while also participating in track, football and basketball before turning his path to karate. As a young teenager he began excelling in jissen (contact) kumite and tameshiwari. His early karate instructors credited him as a "perceptive quick learner, with a love of physical contact, hard training, and gift for instruction", traits that he maintains to this day through his motto of "train hard and often".
For more information about Kancho Soller and the Phoenix Karate-do Association Kyokushinkai International, visit the website: phoenixkaratedo.com
"To me, an elite athlete is someone who neither bounces nor tries to hit a ball. It is that individual who once they don the dogi, wears it day in and day out, for a lifetime, in their great and endless pursuit to improve themselves in the way by forging their spirit of OSU through merging their powers of the physical and mental to touch upon the spiritual. This is the decades of training that a warrior must dedicate themselves to in search of their own victories."
(Soller, Sun & Moon, 2012)