Shiromal Cooray to lead Sri Lanka Institute of Directors

Shiromal Cooray was unanimously elected Chairperson of the Sri Lanka Institute of Directors (SLID) at their 15th Annual Membership Meeting last month, held at the Ivy Room of the Cinnamon Grand.

After accepting the baton to chair the SLID, she spelt out her priorities, which included continuing the organisation’s main focus in governance by conducting events and workshops – with arrangements being made to enlist foreign professionals – and organising regional events focusing on SMEs, family businesses and women on Boards. All these programs will be staged with the intent of driving and enhancing public and private sector compliance.

The other officials elected to the Council of Members were Preethi Jayawardena and A.R. Rasiah as Senior Vice Chairman and Vice Chairman respectively and the re-elected council members were Dilani Alagaratnam, Aroshi Perera, Kavan Ratnayaka, Faizal Salieh, Nilanthi Sivapragasam and Dinesh Weerakkody with Prakash Schaffter elected to fill the vacancy created by the Immediate Past President, Ronnie Peiris, stepping down. Pravir Samarasinghe will step into the position of the Immediate Past President for the coming year.

Eran Wickramaratne, the Deputy Minister of Highways and Investment Promotion, was the Chief Guest at the event.

Outgoing Chairman Pravir Samarasinghe in his address outlined the initiatives taken in the year under review where the main focus was on director education in terms of good governance, the structuring of boards, strategy and financial stewardship. 

To this end, the SLID launched its flagship program ‘board leadership’, covering all four parts of the course. The institute plans to repeat this comprehensive program within the year due to the overwhelmingly positive response received to date. SLID members who complete all four parts of the program are eligible to become Graduate Members and are entitled to use the post nominal GSLID after their names.

In reaching SLID’s objectives, the value placed on human resources was also a priority of the institute and a foreign HR professional was enlisted to deliver a presentation. The other area of focus was taking good corporate governance and compliance to the micro and the SME sector in Matara. In association with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a valuable program was conducted in Batticaloa together with Adam Sack, the Country Manager of IFC in Sri Lanka, and consultants from Bangladesh who flew in for the event. 

With these activities, the SLID continues to enhance its profile as the authoritative source for good corporate governance and director education.

Membership growth and building institutional capacity were the other areas of focus that were strengthened during the year.

Deputy Minister Eran Wickramaratne, in a thought provoking speech, challenged the business community to establish leadership accountability. He wound up stating: “If we accept that we have done something wrong, we admit it, we apologise, we make amends and we act upon it. People don’t expect us to resign for an honest error or lapse. But they expect us to share in the hardship that followed our poor or wrong decision. That is leadership accountability. You could be creative, you could be competent, but your leadership lacks unless you have credibility. Business can certainly show the way so that politicians like myself will follow. That is your challenge!” 

The evening concluded with cocktails and fellowship, affording the membership ample networking opportunities.