Dananjaya makes Sri Lanka proud again

Toastmasters International Hall of Fame Inductee Dananjaya Hettiarachchi made Sri Lanka proud, winning the much looked forward to International Speech Contest, held during the recently concluded Ovation 2012 – the Annual Conference of Toastmasters District 82. He was also the only Sri Lankan to have emerged as a winner of the speech contests held during Ovation 2012.

Dananjaya Hettiarachchi (third from the left) receiving his award from DTM Zameen M Saleem, Toastmasters District 82 Governor (second form the left). Toastmasters International President DTM Michael Notaro and Toastmasters Region 13 International Director DTM Arunasalam Balraj are also present

With his achievement Dananjaya made history being the only Sri Lankan to have won the District level International Speech Contest twice in a row and will be representing District 82 at the highly celebrated Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking 2012. The contest is a highlight of Toastmasters 81st International Convention, scheduled to be held in August 2012 at the Hilton Bonnet Creek Hotel in Orlando, Florida. The speech contest semi-finals will take place on 16 August and nine winners — representing regions from around the world — will advance themselves to the final round, to be held on Saturday, 18 August.

The Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking is the world’s biggest series of public speaking, the Olympics of Oratory, the final bout for the heavyweight title ‘World Champion of Public Speaking’. Each year, this speech contest culminates at the organisation’s four-day International Convention. The District 82 contestant Dananjaya Hettiarachchi made his entry to the semi-finals following a year-long process of elimination at club, area and district level competitions from a pool of 30,000 participants in 116 countries worldwide.

Toastmasters International is the world leader in public speaking, communication and leadership training which serves over 270,000 members in 12,500 plus clubs in 116 countries. Since its founding in October 1924, the organisation has helped more than four million men and women to become confident individuals through its communication and leadership program.

Dananjaya is a seasoned orator who has made several ground breaking achievements during his Toastmaster journey. Before emerging as the winner of the District level International Speech Contest for the first time in 2011, Dananjaya placed second at both 2007 and 2009 competitions. He won the ‘All Island Best Speaker Contest’ in 2007 for his best known speech, ‘Chasing Butterflies’.  He also holds the prestige of being the only Sri Lankan to have won the International Taped Speech Contest in the year 2006 for his speech ‘Humanity, is there hope?’ In recognition of this outstanding achievement, Dananjaya was inducted to the Toastmasters International Hall of Fame.

Apart from competing in international contests, Dananjaya like many Toastmasters has helped others to find their voice as confident individuals. He helped nurture two of the leading Toastmasters clubs in Sri Lanka. He was the President of Smedley Toastmasters club (2007) and the Vice President of Ralph Toastmasters club (2007).

As a professional, Dananjaya is both a trainer and an HRD specialist. Currently much of Dananjaya’s work centres around national HRD infrastructure and policy development, reflected through his work with the Sri Lankan government. A consultant specialised in psychometric profiling based recruitment and performance management, sales, communication, change leadership and customer relationship management, Dananjaya’s clientele includes some of the blue chip corporates in the country such as Virtusa, Nations Trust Bank, HSBC, Airtel, AVIVA, Commercial Bank, Hatton National Bank etc. Dananjaya’s specialised skill set is highly sought after by organisations that place emphasis on employee profiling to better align training and development initiatives, CRM strategies and performance prediction to mitigate performance risk.

Dananjaya is currently reading for his Msc. in HRD and Performance Management from a tier 1 UK University. He holds an MBA from a prestigious Australian University; and a Bachelors Degree with a double major in Marketing and Management. He is also a Sri Lankan Prizewinner of CIM (UK) and is part qualified in CIMA (UK). To put icing on the cake, Dananjaya is also a Gold Medal Dancer and champion ballroom dancer. He was the winner in the ballroom category at the International Dance Sports Competition 2007; who also competed at the Crystal Dance Sports championships in Malaysia in 2010.