Janaki appointed Chairman of Sri Lanka Tea Board; Susantha steps down

Top professional Janaki Kuruppu has been appointed as the new Chairman of the Sri Lanka Tea Board, replacing business leader Susantha Ratnayake.

Sources said that Ratnayake, who is also Chairman of premier blue chip John Keells Holdings and main  private sector lobby the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, had voluntarily stepped down after serving Tea Board as Chief for one-and-a-half years.

However, his exit comes amidst a much-speculated reshuffle of select high posts in the public sector. Several more changes were rumoured at several public sector institutions, though some couldn’t be confirmed at the time this Daily FT edition went to press.

Janaki...

The tea industry noted that during his tenure Ratnayake provided an invaluable service, resolving a host of issues, and that his absence would be missed. His successor Kuruppu, relatively younger, is the Chairperson of Rural Development Bank (RDB).  

She counts over 15 years of experience in marketing, strategy development and business consultancy.

She is currently the Director – Strategy & Perceptions Management at the Presidential Secretariat, directly working under the President. Prior to being appointed Chairperson of RDB, she also briefly served on the Board of Commercial Bank.

With over 10 years experience as an entrepreneur, she was the Managing Director of ACNielsen (Lanka) Pvt. Ltd., formerly known as ORG-MARG SMART, a company she set up in 1994, which later became part of the multinational research firm The Nielsen Company.

In addition to this, her experience includes strategic planning and business development for the Cargills Group, the leading F&B and retail company in the country, as a Board Director of three subsidiary companies and a member of the Executive Management Committee of the group for over three years.

She has also contributed to the marketing fraternity and to marketing education in the country through various forums such as Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing (SLIM), CIM, Chamber of Commerce and through lecturing at SLIM and the Post Graduate Institute of Management. She was also responsible for the introduction of SLIM Brand Excellence when she was an Executive Council member of SLIM.

A holder of a BSc degree in Mathematics and Computer Science and a M.A. in Applied Statistics jointly from the University of Colombo and the University of Missouri, USA, she was also awarded the All American Scholar Award and the US Achievement Academy award for outstanding performance in the USA.