Ceylon Tea Brokers announces strategic Board appointments

Ceylon Tea Brokers has announced the appointment of Beshan Kulapala, Amrah Akbar and Mihirini De Zoysa to its Board as Independent Non-Executive Directors.

Dr. Beshan Kulapala is the Co-Founder and CEO of Cyrus EV Chargers, and Vice President of Innovation and Technology for Volt Charge, a Saudi and Sri Lankan joint venture company developing high-tech electric vehicle charging technologies. He also heads VoltX Ltd., a one-stop engineering services and consultation company specialised in high tech product engineering solutions for clients across the globe. 

Previously Beshan was the Director and a co-founder of Vega Innovations in Sri Lanka.

 He was instrumental in developing Sri Lanka’s and South Asia’s first electric supercar, unveiling the supercar at the Geneva International Motor show in 2020. He also created multiple technology brands under Vega, namely Chargenet: Sri Lanka’s largest EV charging network with home grown EV Chargers, as well as Aigrow: an end-to-end agriculture technology solutions provider for protected agriculture. 

Before moving back to Sri Lanka in 2012, Beshan was an Engineering Manager at Intel Corporation, USA, during which he led a team of engineers to develop integrated debug and survivability capabilities for all CPU products across the company. He was also the co-founder of the Validation Core Unit (VCU) – Centre of Expertise at Intel Corporation. 

In addition, Beshan is also the Chairman of the Sarva Medical Clinic in Boralesgamuwa and volunteers his time as a Scout Master for his local Boy Scout troop. Beshan obtained his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Kentucky, a master’s and PhD in Electrical Engineering and an MBA from Arizona State University, USA.

Amrah Akbar has an over 15-year track record of working in diverse industries such as energy, banking, apparel manufacturing and recently healthcare manufacturing and innovation to create new value streams. She is an Oxford Alum and Chartered Accountant (England & Wales), with recurrent successes in growing business via leading teams to take concepts from ideation stage to launch, and M&A.

Experienced in business development, brand/marketing management, product launch, partnerships, scaling and successful fundraising. She is focused on developing sales and operational teams by building a shared vision, creating solid strategies based on market opportunities, and translating unmet market needs into successful and profitable solutions.

Specialties include Sports Recovery devices, Circulation and Pain Management solutions for lymphedema and chronic health markets, Performance Improvement and Apparel solutions for gamers.

For the last 25 years Mihirini has been working with leaders, teams and organisations, in supporting their journeys through transitions and transformation. At the heart of her work as a coach is enabling leaders and teams to develop the skills and resilience to navigate crisis and uncertainty, to be skilled in having difficult conversations, to build relationships to co-create shared meaningful futures. To this, she brings her experience of working with systems of people, business processes, organisation strategy, vision and culture, and communication dynamics, in diverse multinational corporates, international donor agencies and non-governmental organisations.

She has worked in varied industries, including but not limited to Healthcare, Banking and Insurance, IT, Apparel, Publishing, Telecommunications, Plantations, Hospitality as well as in Non-Governmental Organisations and International Development Organisations such as the United Nations and World Bank. She is a practitioner-scholar with a Doctorate (DProf) in Organisational Change from Ashridge School of Business and Middlesex University, UK; MSc in Responsibility and Business Practices from University of Bath, UK; and BSc in Economics from University of London, UK. 

She is the founder of Corporate Druids Ltd., and also serves as a Non-Executive Director of Logicare Ltd., and is also on the faculty of Hult Ashridge, UK.

With these appointments, the Ceylon Tea Brokers PLC Board of Directors comprises, Niraj De Mel (Chairman), Ajith Fernando, Chrisantha Perera, Shiromal Cooray, Sharmali Perera, Waruna De Silva, Dinesh Fernando, Thilina Nonis, Zameel Mohomed, Beshan Kulapala, Amrah Akbar and Mihirini De Zoysa.