Rohantha awarded CIM Fellowship

The Chartered Institute of Marketing (UK), which celebrates 100 years of leadership in sales and marketing globally, awarded ‘Fellowship Status’ for outstanding performance in the fields of marketing, sales and leadership to Rohantha Athukorala of the United Nations (UNOPS), who serves as the Head of National Portfolio Development – Sri Lanka and Maldives.

The Chief Guest at the event was Emeritus Professor John Saunders, the past Chairman of the Senate (CIM-UK), whilst the Guest of Honour was British High Commissioner in Sri Lanka John Rankin.

Athukorala, one of the outstanding products of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, has been awarded many performance awards in Sri Lanka, the South Asian region and globally for marketing, business and contribution to the industry. He was recently selected by Harvard University for its annual leadership forum for the top 50 leaders in the world on managing change.

A past Head Prefect and Gold award winner at college, he went on to become a brilliant student of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, twice winning the ‘Best Student’ award.

He later secured a multitude of business performance awards in the private sector, before moving on to be the eighth Chairman of the Sri Lanka Export Development Board and the first Executive Director of the Government Economic Council under the Presidential Secretariat when it crossed the Rs. 6,000 billion mark in exports and GDP grew by 7.4%.

Thereafter joining the global community of UNOPS, he has been ranked twice for outstanding performance in the years 2009/2010 and also in the year 2010/2011. He continues to serve the country on export strategy and industrial development by serving Government policymaking boards of the Export Development Board (EDB) and Industrial Development Board (IDB). He is also a Senior Advisor to the Ministry of Industry and Commerce in Sri Lanka and has represented the country at many global forums.

A sought after business speaker, Athukorala has addressed many international forums such as the Asian Development Bank(ADB), the Annual Tea Convention in Dubai and the Global CEO Forum in New York. He is an alumnus of Harvard University and also a Rotary Business Scholar to the USA.