Dilani Alagaratnam LLB. LL.M (Sri Lanka) is an Attorney-at-law of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka.  

Current engagements: She is a director of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce-ICLP Alternate Dispute Resolution Centre, Hatton National Bank, Women’s Fund Asia and Kalyana SL Guarantee Private Limited and is the Ombudsperson for South Asia Gateway Terminals (Pvt) Limited.

Previous engagements:  She served John Keells Holdings in many capacities from 1992 to December 2019, when she retired.  At the time of her retirement, she was a member of its Group Executive Committee and had Group level responsibility for the Functions of Legal & Secretarial; Human Resources; Enterprise Risk Management; Sustainability and CSR; Group Sourcing and for the business of John Keells Office Automation.  She has held the position of director in several subsidiaries of John Keells Holdings PLC, including several listed companies.  She has also held the position of director in Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka and served as an advisory committee member of the State Owned Enterprises Restructuring Unit.  Mrs. Alagaratnam was a Council Member of the Sri Lanka Institute of Directors and a member of the National Labour Advisory Committee.

She has been recognized as a Career Woman Role Model by Women in Management and as one of the most powerful women in Sri Lanka by the Echelon Magazine, among other accolades she has received.

Mr Amar Gunatilleke is the Executive Vice Chairman of Marga Institute and directs all research, M&E and advocacy projects of the Institute. Apart from 8 years of experience managing Marga Institute, he also has over 30 years of experience in Public Relations and Marketing Communications. 

He is the Founder of Avanke` Marcom (www.avanke.com), which focuses on internal communications, stakeholder relations, and communications research. Apart from his exposure to marketing communications, he also has experience working on market and social research assignments in Sri Lanka and Bahrain as a qualitative research consultant. He has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Social Sciences from the Open University of Sri Lanka and a Diploma in Personnel Management from the Institute of Personnel Management – Sri Lanka.

 He has held positions such as CEO and Director, Client Service in local and multinational advertising agencies and also worked as an external communications consultant of Hayleys Agriculture Holdings. 

Dr Minna Thaheer counts more than 15 years of professional engagement in the humanitarian and development sectors. She has authored books, journal articles and contributed to edited volumes mainly in the fields related to peace building, human rights and sustainable development. 

Dr Thaheer is a Consultant on Social Development at the World Bank, Sri Lanka. She is the immediate former Director of the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies (BCIS), Colombo. 

She was a recipient of the NUFU PhD scholarship from the University of Oslo, and was awarded a PhD in Political Science by the University of Colombo on a tripartite PhD programme with the University of Oslo, Norway, the University of Gadjamada, Indonesia and the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. 

Rev Fr. Noel Dias is a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Colombo, where he has served since 1987. He holds a Ph.D. in international fair trial standards from the University of Wales, an M.Phil. from the University of Colombo, and an LL.M. from the University of London. He is also a qualified Attorney-at-Law in Sri Lanka and a Solicitor of the Law Society of London.

Fr. Dias has served as a visiting lecturer at several institutions, including Cardiff Law School and the Kotelawala Defence University. He is the founding editor of the Sri Lanka Journal of International Law, a widely respected publication in the field.

A respected scholar, he has authored numerous works including a standard Sinhala textbook on International, Comparative, and Human Rights Law. He has also contributed to the World Arbitration Reporter series during his tenure at Columbia Law School’s Parker School of International and Comparative Law.

Ordained in 1972, Fr. Dias has extensive pastoral experience and remains active as chaplain to Catholic students at the University of Colombo. He has been involved in social justice initiatives, including founding a local consumer protection association and offering legal aid to underserved communities.

Sriyani Hulugalle has her MA in Development Studies (Economic Policy Planning) from the Institute of Social Studies in the Hague in the Netherlands and a BA in Economics, Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Peradeniya.

She worked as a Senior Economist at the World Bank during 1989- 2017. She started her career at the State Timber Corporation and served at the Export Development Board prior to that. She has authored several academic publications during her World Bank career ranging from Finance, Investments, Trade, Tourism etc.

 In her career, she was more into economic research and operational work in Sri Lanka and Maldives. She has led World Projects in SME Development, Privatization, Finance, Tourism and Legal Reforms in Sri Lanka and Financial Sector Projects in Maldives.