Bimal Gunapala

Bimal Gunapala is currently heading Wiley Global Technology Pvt Ltd (AKA Wiley Sri Lanka) as the General Manager. Wiley Sri Lanka started just over 2 years ago in Colombo as one of the key Technology Centers of John Wiley & Sons. Within that short time, it has grown rapidly by 430+ staff with a plan to grow further in the coming months. It is now the largest Technology Center of John Wiley & Sons driving their Product Engineering and Technology Operations with local talent.

Romesh Ranawana

Romesh is a serial entrepreneur, an AI technologist, a programmer and software architect with more than 20 years of deep tech development experience, and a highly experienced technology chief executive.

Suresh Hettiarchchi

Dr. Suresh Hettiarachchi is the venture partner & technology commercialization manager at 360ip Japan who initiated and promoted 360ip's investment efforts in Sri Lanka. With international experience in technology development, scientific research, investments and commercialization, Suresh brings valuable contributions from the technology realm as well as the investment realm to the venture eco-system. With an academic and professional background in AI, robotics and digital transformation, he has served in organizations in Japan, Australia and Sri Lanka, including a tenure as the Executive Director at a Tokyo Stock Exchange-listed corporation.

Amardeep Devadasan

Amardeep Devadason, Senior Vice President - Operations, heads business operations at RRD, including the Administration, Business Continuity Management, and Security functions. Besides operations, he drives the marketing initiatives and branding programs of the organization, as well as all its critical practices. As a certified Leadership and Executive Coach, he is a strong advocate of creative thinking and encourages mentees to think and execute innovatively. He also leads RRD’s CSR initiatives and has helped build a network of volunteers that work for community and environmental causes. It merits mention that he is a former Chairperson of the NASSCOM Diversity and Inclusion initiative at the regional level and has been actively championing this cause for several years.

Raja Subramaniam

Raja has been part of Synopsys South Asia for over two decades, he has strong Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software background working with customers in Asia and India. Has led teams to manage growth and adoption of new and advanced EDA technology. Built successful teams for both startups and well-established companies during the course of his career. His current responsibility as VP Application engineering spans across all of Synopsys’s customers in Asia Pac and Japan. He has a bachelor’s in electrical engineering from Bangalore University.

Sachindra Samararatne

Leading a team of superstars and together, driving Sri Lanka towards a Startup Nation. Contributing as a member of National level committees creating a growth environment for innovation, entrepreneurship, and exports. Engaging with youth and startups through mentoring and judging national pitching competitions. Evangelizing the appropriate usage of digital and responsible disruption.

Jayantha Desliva

Jayantha Desilva- secretary to the ministry of technology

Vivek Sood

Vivek holds a Bachelor in Commerce and Qualified Chartered Accountant from India. He conducted his Accountancy and Audit Training in Pricewaterhouse.

Dr. Nisha Talagala

Nisha Talagala is the CEO and founder of AIClub.World which is bringing AI Literacy to K-12 students and individuals worldwide. Nisha has significant experience in introducing technologies like Artificial Intelligence to new learners from students to professionals. Previously, Nisha co-founded ParallelM which pioneered the MLOps practice of managing Machine Learning in production for enterprises - acquired by DataRobot. Nisha is a recognized leader in the operational machine learning space, having also driven the USENIX Operational ML Conference, the first industry/academic conference on production AI/ML. Nisha was previously a Fellow at SanDisk and Fellow/Lead Architect at Fusion-io, where she worked on innovation in non-volatile memory technologies and applications. Nisha has more than 20 years of expertise in enterprise software development, distributed systems, technical strategy, and product leadership. She has worked as technology lead for server flash at Intel - where she led server platform non-volatile memory technology development, storage-memory convergence, and partnerships. Prior to Intel, Nisha was the CTO of Gear6, where she designed and built clustered computing caches for high-performance I/O environments. Nisha earned her Ph.D. at UC Berkeley where she did research on clusters and distributed systems. Nisha holds 73 patents in distributed systems and software, over 25 refereed research publications, is a frequent speaker at industry and academic events, and is a contributing writer to Forbes and other publications.

Srimathi Shivashankar

Srimathi is a Corporate Vice President and the Program Director for New Vistas at HCL Technologies. With an extensive experience of more than two decades in Business and Human Capital strategy, Srimathi has headed and primed global transformation initiatives at HCL. Currently, she is responsible for strategizing and operationalizing new HCL delivery centers through the New Vistas program. She was also the key architect of the HCL Foundation and HCL Grant initiatives.

Nishan Mendis

Dag Honningsvag

Dag accounts for over 25 years’ experience from international organizations within ICT and consultancy. His experience ranges from strategic planning, initiating business alliances, securing funding to achieving ambitious expansion plans and M&A. As a ‘hands-on’ investor, Dag presently engages as the Chairman of the Board in Norwegian companies such as Driw, Aspit, Heimdall Power, Windsim, Adline, Penetrace and Data Factory, and 99x in Sri Lanka. Dag thrives in ever-changing business environments, with multicultural negotiation experience in the US, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Taiwan.

Jehan Perinpanayagam - Moderator

BPM Thought Leader| passionate evangelist for Sri Lanka| pioneer of rural BPO| CEO and Mentor

Kerry Hallard

Kerry is leading the GSA in its quest to grow both the reach and positive reputation of the global sourcing industry. She is passionate about the ongoing development and dissemination of the Global Sourcing Standard and further professionalizing the sourcing industry. The Global Sourcing Association (GSA) is the industry association and professional body for the global sourcing industry, and home to the Global Sourcing Standard. The GSA also serves to share best practices, trends, and connections across the globe and to bring the global community together in a wholly interactive manner for the first time. The Global Sourcing Association UK, also known as GSA-UK, was formerly known as the National Outsourcing Association in the UK

Dinesh Wickremanayake

Dinesh took over as the Country Managing Director for WNS Sri Lanka in 2016. He is a Senior Leader with a proven track record in a number of Financial and Management disciplines. He brings with him a wealth of expertise and knowledge, gained over 30 years of experience in the areas of Finance and Accounting, setting-up and Managing Global Business Services, Captive Shared Service Centers, and all aspects of Business Process Management/Re-Engineering, including expertise in the areas of Delivery, Transformation, Automation, (Pre/Post Sales), Solution Design, Transitions and Operational Excellence.

Dee Liyanwela

Dee Liyanwela is the Group Head of Corporate Operations, London Stock Exchange Group. He is also responsible for executing LSEG’s Group Offshoring Strategy. Dee was previously an Executive Director for London Clearing House (LCH, an LSEG company) for eight years, responsible for Listed Derivatives, Equities and Fixed Income Technology. He has more than 20 years of experience in building technology platforms, managing various technology functions and delivering services via global offshore delivery centers.

Darren Roos

Darren Roos is in his third year as CEO of IFS, a post he took in April 2018. His vision spearheaded the transformation of the company internally through modernization and digital transformation and externally with the promise of delivering value to customers and putting them at the heart of the IFS business and product development strategy. Darren built his career in global software businesses over 20 years. He previously served as President of SAP’s global ERP Cloud business, with prior roles as General Manager of Northern Europe and Chief Operating Officer of EMEA for the company.

Channa Manoharan

With more than 25 years’ experience in three of the big four professional services firms, Channa is passionate about growing the Knowledge and Innovation sector (IT-BPM) in Sri Lanka and has contributed to industry growth, market access and talent related capacity and policy initiatives since 2005.
Channa is the Chairman of SLASSCOM having served as the Vice Chairman from July 2017 to June 2019 and has been a Board Member since 2015.
Channa is also a member of the Leadership Team, COO and Advisory Leader for PwC Sri Lanka and Maldives.
During his career he has been extensively involved in providing management consulting and advisory services to multi-nationals and multilateral agencies in relation to business transformation including growth strategy encompassing organic and inorganic growth. He has facilitated expansion strategies to emerging markets including cross border transaction advisory services.
Channa has served in several committees of industry chambers and professional bodies and at present serves as a Member of the IT/BPO Sector Task Force of the Presidential Task Force on Economic Revival and Poverty Eradication, Member of the Main Committee of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, Member of the EDB’s IT/BPM Advisory Committee, Member of the Exporters Association of Sri Lanka’s Managing Committee and Founder member of Global Trade & Business Services Council (GT&BSC)
Channa is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka (CA Sri Lanka) and a Fellow of the Institute of Certified Management Accountants of Sri Lanka.