World Food Program Country Director to address CIM SL CEOs’ Breakfast Forum tomorrow

The Chartered Institute of Marketing Sri Lanka will be hosting its first CIM CEOs’ Breakfast Forum for this year tomorrow at Barnes, Jetwing Colombo Seven from 7.30 a.m. onwards. 

The forum will bring together top business leaders, CEOs, CIM Fellow Members and senior corporate executives and is organised with the objective of highlighting emerging themes in marketing and business and discussing best practices to support strategic decisions for the future. This forum will be a platform for participants to share and exchange key insights which will help them in making decisions at their own organisations.  

The speaker at the forum will be World Food Program (WFP) representative and Country Director Brenda Barton. Barton assumed her role as Country Director and WFP Representative in Sri Lanka in October 2016. 

She was formerly the Deputy Regional Director for WFP’s Regional Bureau in Southern Africa, providing strategic, technical and oversight support and guidance to 11 countries from Johannesburg, South Africa, including during the EI Nino drought which rendered 40 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, and was declared a corporate emergency by WFP in June 2016.    

Prior to joining WFP’s Regional Bureau in 2011, and after many years spent in Africa pioneering WFP’s field-based communications and media activities during high-profile emergencies, Barton served for eight years as Deputy Director of WFP’s Communications, Public Policy and Private Sector Division in Rome Italy, where she spearheaded and guided initiatives in 78 countries.  

Barton graduated from Arizona State University with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, with a major in Marketing. She specialised in Advertising and Public Relations in her home city, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. 

CIM is the largest community of professional marketers in the world with 100 years of heritage. As the leading professional body for marketing, CIM places great emphasis in bringing together programs that are topical and relevant targeting the members and the entire business community. CIM Sri Lanka is the first international branch of CIM UK and has the largest membership outside of the UK. CIM Sri Lanka has always campaigned for high professional standards, greater recognition for the profession and marketing excellence in Sri Lanka through education, training and development.