What is Symbol

Cooper is an emerging West Australian corporate leader and a driving force behind the rapid growth of Peiris Group’s diverse business footprint. With a background spanning allied health, aged care, disability, and community services, he oversees overall business growth and performance, including operations, workforce, service delivery, and organisational development.

Kane is an innately talented human resource specialist, skilled in identifying, procuring, and placing excellent people into excellent roles. With a sound focus on developing inclusivity and diversity initiatives, Kane helps build careers and professional value for individuals that, in turn, benefit the Peiris Group of companies. As a director of Symbol Aged Care, he contributes to governance, strategic direction, and meaningful organisational growth.

A significant contributing architect of today’s National Disability Scheme, Anita Peiris is arguably the country’s foremost single contributor to creating support platforms for disadvantaged and vulnerable Australians.

Under her leadership, multiple service-based organisations within her family business, Peiris Group, support thousands of individuals across Australia. These include large-scale disability and community support providers, and initiatives focused on housing stability, youth justice reform and transitional support for women and children experiencing crisis.

Anita is a 2024 Australian of the Year nominee and a Finalist for Women Changing the World. As CEO of Symbol, she is laser-focused on ensuring the delivery of its promise of ‘Positive Aged Care’, underpinned by a personal and professional belief system that exceptional care and exceptional service are one and the same.

With more than twenty years of international hospitality leadership experience across Australia, France and the United Kingdom, Ashleigh Bernhagen brings a unique and highly valuable skill set to Symbol’s strategic vision of viewing aged care through the lens of hospitality.

Working alongside Symbol’s expert clinical teams, Ashleigh’s core focus is optimising the client experience through the design of genuine, memorable and meaningful service moments. Her approach creates service standards aligned with the same consistency, culture and excellence she cultivated within luxury hotel and catering environments.

Ashleigh also plays a central role in developing and maintaining Symbol’s brand standards, staff development and recruitment initiatives, and incentive programs that strengthen team engagement and culture.