Ahmed A. Jawad, formerly a senior career diplomat with the Sri Lanka Foreign Service is the Director of the Centre for Indo-Lanka Initiatives at the Pathfinder Foundation.

He was Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to Norway and Saudi Arabia and High Commissioner to Canada. He held various diplomatic positions at Sri Lanka missions in Sweden, France (including UNESCO) and China. In Canada, he served concurrently as Representative of Sri Lanka to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

Jawad was lastly Additional Secretary, Multilateral Affairs in the Foreign Ministry. He also held many other positions, in between tours of duty abroad, in a Foreign Service career spanning 32 years. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Peradeniya and a Master’s Degree, in international relations, from the University of Colombo and was awarded a Fellowship in Disarmament by the United Nations Centre for Disarmament Affairs in Geneva.

Independent Non- Executive Director in a diverse portfolio of Listed and Unlisted companies including MNCs Rajendra Theagarajah is an Alumni of Price Waterhouse Coopers and a Fellow Member of CA Sri Lanka as well as CIMA (UK). He obtained his MBA from Cranfield School of Business, UK and had a highly successful career in Banking both in the United Kingdom and Sri Lanka. During a 36 year career, Theagarajah spent the last 16 years as CEO of Three private sector licensed commercial banks in Sri Lanka and had the opportunity of contributing significantly towards policy advocacy issues such as Corporate Governance Framework for Banks, Basel III adoption and fair Value Accounting by Banks, Financial Inclusion and more recently development of Fintec Sand Box framework for Banks. During the above period he Chaired the Sri Lanka Banks Association, the Asian Banks Association, Served in the board of Lanka Clear as well as Colombo Stock Exchange. 

Mr Theagarajah has been actively involved in the Board of Sri Lanka’s oldest business chamber the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce for over a decade and as the only career banker to serve as its chairman for a two-year tenure 2017-19.

Having retired from full time active management since September 2020, Mr Theagarajah continues to contribute towards business and economic renaissance of Sri Lanka by serving in a diverse pool of Boards ranging from family-owned private companies, start-ups in Payments and Data Analytics, a JV in operating a tier 3 state of the art Data Centre, a Listed conglomerate and a Multi-National Company with manufacturing interests in Sri Lanka. He continues to support policy advocacy issues of the CCC by Chairing the National Agenda Committee on Entrepreneur Ecosystem. He is also a Senior Visiting Fellow of the Pathfinder Foundation a leading think tank in Sri Lanka.

Mr Asoka Milinda Moragoda’s career has spanned business, government, politics, diplomacy, academia, philanthropy and the media. He is the High Commissioner of Sri Lanka to India and Founder of the Pathfinder Foundation, one of Sri Lanka’s leading independent policy research and advocacy organisations.

He is also the Founder and Chairman of the MMBL-Pathfinder Group, a diversified privately-held investment group. He is a newspaper columnist and conducts several TV talk shows. He is actively engaged in inter- and intra-faith initiatives, is involved in a lay capacity in many Buddhist institutions and is a Patron of the Prisoners Welfare Association. Mr Moragoda is an advisor to the High-Level Panel for ‘A Sustainable Ocean Economy’, was a member of the United Nations High Level Commission on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor and designated a Global Leader for Tomorrow and Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. As Honorary Consul for Brazil in Sri Lanka in the 1990s, he was bestowed the Order of Rio Branco by the President of Brazil.

Mr Moragoda was a member of the Sri Lanka parliament for 10 years; a Cabinet Minister holding various portfolios, including Economic Reform, Science and Technology, Tourism and Justice; and a Deputy Minister of Policy Development and Implementation. As Minister of Economic Reform, he provided leadership to bold economic reform programmes, including state-owned enterprises restructuring. As Minister of Science and Technology, he led the E-Sri Lanka initiative, which included setting up the Information and Communication Technology Agency as the apex body. He conducted a major restructuring of the government agencies dealing in the tourism sector, creating a public/private partnership to regulate and promote tourism. As Justice and Law Reform Minister, he set up a series of committees to address issues ranging from identifying causes for legal delays, Right to Information, juvenile justice, child protection, women in justice and Muslim marriage law to prison reform.

The rehabilitation programme for former Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam child soldiers conducted during his tenure – implemented as a partnership between the government, the military, the private sector, international agencies and religious organisations – has been cited as a model programme by international authorities.

Mr Moragoda served as a member of the Cabinet Subcommittee on Defence with special responsibility for the coordination of external defence matters. Between 2001 and 2003, he was on the government team for peace negotiations. He has functioned as Senior Advisor to the President, Special Presidential Envoy and Special Government Envoy at various times during his career.

Mr Moragoda holds an MBA from the Institute for Management Development in Switzerland and was a Fellow at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Centre for International Affairs (1994-95).

Dr. Indrajit Coomaraswamy was Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka from July 4th 2016 to December 19th Dr. Coomaraswamy has over 40 years of experience in policy making and providing economic advisory services, on both macroeconomic and structural issues at national and intergovernmental levels.

Dr Coomaraswamy started his career in the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (1974-89). He worked in the Economic Research, Statistics and Bank Supervision Departments of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. During this time, Dr CoomaraswamywassecondedtotheMinistryofFinanceandPlanning, from 1982 to 1989.

He was employed by the Commonwealth Secretariat from 1989-2008. During that time, he held positionssuchasDirector, Economic Affairs Division and Deputy- Director, Secretary - General’s Office. HehasalsoservedastheInterimDirector, Social Transformation ProgrammeDivision. Dr Coomaraswamy has also served as an Independent Non-Executive Director of John KeellsHoldings PLCfrom2011toJuly2016;Tokyo Cement Company (Lanka) PLCfrom2011toJuly2016 and May
2020 to date; and Sarvodaya Development Finance Limited.He is also currently Chairman of Linear Wealth Management and an Independent Non-Executive Director of Dialog Axiata plc as well as a Distinguished Fellow at the Pathfinder Foundation.

Dr. Coomaraswamy obtained a B.A. (Hons) degree from the University of Cambridge and subsequentlyaDPhildegreefromtheUniversityofSussex.In addition, he has represented and led the Sri Lanka National Rugby team. Dr Coomaraswamy also played First Class Cricket.

Dr Coomaraswamy received awards as the “Sri Lankan of the Year 2016 “(LMD) and “Central Bank Governor of the Year for South Asia” 2017 (Euromoney Institutional Investor Group Plc). He also received the Sri Lankan national honor of “Deshamanya” in August, 2019.

Gayathri de Zoysa was formerly Research Associate and now Manager-Programmes at the Pathfinder Foundation.

She has over twenty years of experience in the academic, research and think-tank sector, having served at the University of Colombo; Regional Centre for Strategic Studies (RCSS); and the Institute of National Security Studies (INSS). Ms.de Zoysa has a BA (Hons.) in International Relations and a Master’s Degree in Development Studies from the University of Colombo.

Dr. Ganeshan Wignaraja is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Pathfinder Foundation. He is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISEAS) at the National University of Singapore, a Senior Research Associate at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in London and an Adjunct Senior Fellow Adjunct at Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS) in New Delhi. In a career over the last thirty years in the UK and Asia, Ganeshan has held senior roles in international organizations (Director of Research at the ADB Institute in Tokyo, Chief Programme Officer at the Commonwealth Secretariat in London and Visiting Scholar at the IMF in Washington DC), government (Executive Director of the Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry’s think tank in Colombo, a Member of the Prime Minister’s Task Force on the Indian Ocean and a Member of the Monetary Policy Consultative Committee of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka) and the private sector (Global Head of Trade and Competitiveness at Maxwell Stamp PLC in London).He has led teams to deliver complex projects in over 30 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America.

Ganeshan has a DPhil in economics from Oxford University and has published 20 books including Asia in 2025: Development Challenges and Prospects for Middle-Income Countries; Pan-Asian Integration: Linking East and South Asia; Connecting Asia: Infrastructure for Integrating South and Southeast Asia; Asia’s Free Trade Agreements; Economic Reforms, Regionalism and Exports: Comparing China and India; and Trade Liberalisation in Sri Lanka.

Dr. Dayaratna Silva is an International Trade Economist with over 30 years of experience in the areas of economic development, trade policy and trade facilitation. He earned a Bachelor of Commerce degree (Honors) with a first class from University of Peradeniya. He possesses several postgraduate qualifications including Ph.D. in Economics (University of Melbourne) and Master’s Degree in in International Economics (University of London) and Postgraduate Diploma in Economic Development (University of Colombo).

Most recently, he worked for the International Trade Centre in Geneva, as the National Project Coordinator of EU-Sri Lanka Trade Related Assistance Project. He served as a Senior Economic Affairs Officer/Deputy Head attached to subregional office (SRO) of UNESCAP in New Delhi. Prior to joining the United Nations, he served as Director of Commerce at Department of Commerce, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the WTO in Geneva, Consul General to UAE, Minister (Economic and Commercial) in Geneva, Brussels and London. In his career at the Department of Commerce spanning over 25 years he handled multiple duties including overseeing and safeguarding Sri Lanka’s interest in multilateral negotiation in WTO, UNCTAD, ITC, GSP, GSTP, SAARC and BIMSTEC. Mr. Silva has extensive knowledge of trade-related issues, including the EU-GSP, trade policy and facilitation, trade capacity development and promotion.

A graduate in History and post graduate in International Relations (The Hague), Bernard Goonetilleke spent nearly four decades as an officer of the Sri Lanka Foreign Service. Following his retirement, he was appointed chairman of Sri Lanka Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management (SLITHM) and later Chairman of Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) and Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau (SLTPB), which positions he held concurrently from 2008 to 2010.

His career as a Foreign Service officer began in 1970 and included postings to Sri Lanka diplomatic missions in Kuala Lumpur, New York, Bangkok, Washington D.C., Geneva and Beijing. He held several positions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs including the post of Director General (Multilateral Affairs) from 1997-2000, and ending as Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2003-2004).

During his career, he served as Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the UN in Geneva (1992-1997), during which period he was concurrently accredited to the Holy See and as Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations in Vienna. Later he served as Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China (2000-2003), during which assignment he was concurrently accredited as Ambassador to the People’s Republic of Mongolia and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. He also served as Acting Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the UN in New York (2004-2005) and ended his diplomatic career as Ambassador to the United States of America (2005-2008).

Following the signing of the Ceasefire Agreement between the Government and the LTTE in 2002, he headed the Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process (SCOPP) and functioned as one of the four members of the government negotiating team.

Since May 2010, he functions as Chairman, Pathfinder Foundation and Director of several companies associated with the Mercantile Merchant Bank (MMBL).