To elevate Sri Lankan brand effectiveness and creativity.

Over the past 14 years, I have worked across research, business development and brand leadership at companies including Unilever Sri Lanka, Atlas Axillia and John Keells Holdings PLC. I have led product launches, driven category growth and been part of campaigns that have won awards. More than anything, those years taught me how consumers think, how brands connect and how businesses truly grow.

Early in my career, I walked into my first FMCG role as a brand marketer feeling like a deer caught in headlights. The deadlines never stop, everything is urgent and the expectation is that you already know what you are doing. It took me a while to find my feet and there were moments, I genuinely wondered if I had chosen the right path.

I am sure there are many people in this industry today going through what I went through early in my career. It is why I vehemently believe in what The Faculty of Brands stands for.

Over the years, a deeper personal journey shaped the way I think about work and purpose. I came to believe that the most meaningful work is work that creates a positive impact in the world. That belief is what led me to TFOB.

TFOB is an extension of everything I believe in. Sri Lankan brand builders are capable of producing work that competes with the best in the world. What they need is the right knowledge and the confidence to apply it.

Over the past 16 years, I have worked across aviation, logistics and business leadership, building an understanding of how operations run, how high stakes decisions get made and how businesses are built from the ground up.

Aviation was my world. I spent the better part of my career in air cargo, including time at Emirates at its Dubai hub, and genuinely believed it would be my lifelong career. Then COVID changed everything. I left the industry, built a logistics startup from scratch, grew it beyond breakeven and eventually had to sell it. It was one of the toughest periods of my life.

What followed was unexpected. In 2023, Kavi and I started The Faculty of Brands with the belief that Sri Lanka's marketing and brand community deserved better access to practical, real world learning. I knew very little about marketing at the time. What I did not expect was how much I would come to believe in what we were building.

My background has never been in marketing and that is exactly what I bring to TFOB. I see everything we create through the eyes of someone who has never studied a brand brief or sat in a marketing meeting. My strengths lie in operations, execution and building the systems that make sure what we promise actually gets delivered.

I studied chemistry, completing two first class degrees from the University of Colombo and the Institute of Chemistry. Then civil war ended and everything changed. It was a time our country needed us so I decided to stay and enter the corporate world. I was blessed to join Unilever at that point as a management trainee.

That pivot from science to marketing turned out to be less of a departure than it seemed. Marketing, at its best, is a science. It is about understanding human behaviour, testing hypotheses and building things that work in the real world. That belief has shaped everything I have done since.

Over 16 years across Unilever Sri Lanka, Softlogic Life and Sunshine Consumer Lanka and now at Yara, I work on brands that pushes me to think differently, challenge conventions and find more honest, more effective ways to connect with people.

Throughout that journey, I kept seeing the same thing. Talented people left to figure things out on their own, with no real space to stop, ask questions and grow. Giving back to the industry I love and putting Sri Lanka on the global map was something I had thought about for years. The Faculty of Brands was my way of finally doing something about it.

As Co-Founder and Lead Faculty, I bring the same evidence based, practically rooted thinking that shaped my career into every learning experience TFOB creates. My deepest hope is that one day Sri Lanka is recognised as a marketing and advertising powerhouse on the global stage. Everything we do at TFOB is a step towards that.