WISTA Career Fair and Quiz 2015

The Women in Shipping and Trade Association (WISTA) teamed with up the Women in Logistics and Transport (WILAT) to host a career fair and quiz to attract more qualified women to the industry.

The event was held on 30 October at the Galadari Hotel, Colombo and was well-attended by university students. The main sponsor for this event was Achievers Lanka with media coverage offered by Learn TV. WISTA is a global organisation for women in the maritime sector and has over 2,200 members from 34 countries.

The aim of the event was to educate female university students about the opportunities afforded to them by a career in the maritime industry. Women are woefully underrepresented in the maritime industry and many of them don’t even consider it as an option so WISTA and WILAT hoped to raise awareness by bringing together shipping companies and students. Each company that attended gave a presentation to the attentive students.

At the event, WISTA also launched the Associate Membership. This membership is for students and junior executives who are below 25 years of age. It involves only a nominal membership fee and the winning team was presented with Associate Memberships free of charge. The quiz compromised of nine teams with five participants each. The educational institutes that took part were Moratuwa University, CINEC, NIBM, Achievers Lanka, University of Colombo, Kottalawala Defence University and Chartered Ship Brokers.  The panel of judges for this event comprised of Dr. Dan Mallaka Gunasekara, Sriyamal Gamage, Dashma Ranawaka and Kanishka Jayasinghe. The quiz master was Navin Wickremasinghe.

The winner of the quiz completion was Moratuwa University Team 2. Second place went to CINEC team 1 and third place to Moratuwa University team 1.

The students present had the opportunity to meet representatives of leading shipping companies such as Salota, Wallem Lanka, McLarens Holdings, GAC Group, Pership Group, CILT, Ceylon Cold Stores, Hayleys Advantis, Ceylon Shipping Corporation, MSC Lanka, Merc Marine, Aitken Spence Cargo, Expolanka, Prudential Shipping and were able to gain knowledge on various opportunities available within the field of shipping and logistics industry.

WISTA Sri Lanka President Shehara Jayawardana thanked all the companies present for their contribution to this event. Wista Exco member Anoma Ranasinghe headed the subcommittee which organised the event.