Five new Directors on BOC Board

The Bank of Ceylon has got five new appointments to its Board of Directors. 

They are M.T.I. Visakha Amarasekere, P. Lalith P. Withana, A.V.K. Madhavie Herath, H. Isuru Balapatabendi and G. Harsha Wijayawardhana. 

Visakha Amarasekere

P. Lalith P. Withana

A.V.K. Madhavie Herath

Isuru Balapatabendi

Harsha Wijayawardhana

Ameresekere is the representative of the Finance Ministry on the BOC Board as ex-officio Non Executive Director. She is presently attached to the Department of External Resources of the General Treasury as a Director and has over 15 years of experience at the Treasury. She holds a Bachelor of Science (Hons.) degree in Economics and Management, University of London, UK, and Master of Arts degree in Development Economics, Vanderbilt University, US. She is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants UK and is also a Chartered Public Finance Accountant. She has represented the Treasury on the Boards of state-owned enterprises including the CEB, CPC and People’s Bank. 

Withana has previously served as an Independent Director on BOC Board, Merchant Bank of Sri Lanka and Finance Plc, Ceylease Ltd. and Seylan Bank as well as Dankotuwa Porcelain Plc. He was also a Commissioner of the Telecommunication Regulatory Commission. 

Withana has held management positions in the corporate sector for over 25 years in which he had been at senior management levels for over 18 years in banking manufacturing and trade. He has worked with many organisations including Brandix Group, Ernst & Young, Amsterdam Rotterdam (Amro) Bank, IBM World Trade Corporation, Carson CumberbatchPlc, MJF Group, Yamaha Corporation in the US and SriLankan Airlines. He is currently the CEO of SriLankan Catering Ltd.

He also functions as a Member of the Advisory Board for the School of Apparel Merchandising and Management at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, US. He is currently a Co-Chairman of the Finance Committee of the National Olympic Committee of Sri Lanka and is a Vice President of the Project Management Institute, Sri Lanka Chapter. He holds a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, a Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) degree from the University of Manchester Metropolitan, UK. He is a Fellow Member of both the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants UK and Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka. He is also a Project Management Professional at the Project Management Institute, US.

Herath has previously served as the Chairperson of Kandurata Development Bank and as an Executive Director of Regional Development Bank. She is currently a senior lecturer in Economics and Statistics at the University of Peradeniya. She holds a Master of Philosophy, degree in Economics and a Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) degree. She specialises in the areas of money, banking and interest in entrepreneurship. 

Balapatabendi is an Attorney-at-Law by profession and has served on several boards of private and public sector organisations including banks. He holds an LLM from the University of Pittsburgh, School of Law, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US. He has functioned as a State Counsel, Attorney General’s Department of Sri Lanka and as a Diplomat in the Embassy of Sri Lanka in The Hague, Netherlands (2008-2010).

Wijayawardhana is the Head of Unit at Software Development Unit, University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC) and is the Chief Operating Officer of Theekshana (a company managed by the University of Colombo, School of Computing, UCSC) and is also the Director/CEO of a nascent company on Internet of Things (IoT) in Sri Lanka. 

Wijayawardhana, who is an alumnus of the University of Miami, US, has more than 25 years of experience in ICT. He was also involved in developing the Software Development Unit (SDU) of UCSC. He and his team at SDU have been an integral part of developing software for the Sri Lankan Government.

He has contributed immensely to the development of the Internet and e-Governance in Sri Lanka. He was a member of the Internet Committee of the Council for Information Technology (CINTEC). This is where the very first work on implementation of Sinhala Unicode began. Wijayawardhana has been an ardent advocate of Sinhala Unicode and has developed Sinhala Unicode compliant fonts in his lab. He is a member of the Local Language Working Group of the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) and is a member of the Sectoral Committee on ICT of the Sri Lanka Standards Institution (SLSI). 

Wijayawardhana was also the Founder President of the local chapter of Internet Society (ISOC-LK). He has served on the Board of LK Domain Registry since its inception. He was recognised as an Internet Pioneer at the celebration on 20 years of connecting Sri Lanka to commercial Internet, by ISOC, the LK Doman Registry and ICTA, in 2015.

The new Board of Bank of Ceylon comprises Neil Umagiliya (Chairman), M.T.I. Visakha Amarasekere, P. Lalith P. Withana, A.V.K. Madhavie Herath, H.Isuru Balapatabendi and G. Harsha Wijayawardhana.