Kasturi Chellaraja Wilson
Kasturi Angela Chellaraja Wilson is the group chief executive officer and executive director  of Hemas Holdings PLC. She is the first female Group CEO of a public quoted conglomerate in Sri Lanka.

Kasturi is a single mother of two boys; Ashvindh and Amrith Wilson and she has also Captained the National Basketball Team in 1989.

Career 

Kasturi is a former student of Holy Family Convent, Bambalapitiya. She is also an avid sportswoman and was an active member of the National Netball and Basketball Teams.  A Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants and an alumna of the Executive Leadership Program at Harvard Business School, Kasturi started her career at Someswaran Jayewickreme & Co. (currently, Deloitte) in 1988 as an Audit Trainee. She also served as an audit manager and as director consultancy prior to being appointed as financial controller at Aramex Airborne Lanka. For a brief period, she also served as Financial Controller at Confifi Hotels. She became a member of Hemas Holdings PLC in March 2002. She initially joined the organization as Director Finance at HemTours and continued to hold many senior management positions, including chief processing officer and managing director of the Hemas Transportation Sector. Her portfolio also included Hemas Aviation, Hemas Logistics and Hemas Maritime Services. In 2016, she was appointed as the managing director of Hemas Pharmaceuticals, Hemas Surgicals and Hemas Diagnostics.

She serves on the board of National Development Bank PLC as a non-executive director, along with several other Hemas subsidiaries in the healthcare, consumer and mobility sectors. Kasturi also serves on the board of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce. She was appointed as the Regional Champion for the World Bank for South Asia in April 2022 and UNICEF Sri Lanka Business Council (Child Rights and Business Principles)  in  April 2023.

She is also the immediate past president of the Sri Lanka Chamber of the Pharmaceutical Industry and was the first female to be elected as president of the Sri Lanka Chamber of the Pharmaceutical Industry (SLCPI). She has served as a non-executive director of Capital Alliance Holdings Limited till end of April 2023, was a council member of the National Sports Council of Sri Lanka till March 2022 and has served on boards of SLID ( Sri Lanka Institute of Directors ), CIMA Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka and the American Chamber of Commerce in Sri Lanka. and Lankan Angels Network (LAN) – a leading start up eco system in Sri Lanka.

Awards 

In 2019, Kasturi was recognised as being one of the twelve Top Women Change-Makers in the country by the Parliament of Sri Lanka and USAID. Kasturi was also the recipient of the Career Role Model Award in 2013 by Women in Management, Sri Lanka and the IFC; a World Bank Group. In 2016, she also won the Women Super Achiever Award at the World Women Leadership Congress Awards, India. She was also recognized as one of the ten ‘Wise Women’ impactful leaders of Sri Lanka by the Ministry of Skills and Vocational Education in 2022 and was named as the ‘Business Leader of the Year’ at the SAP Dare to Dream Awards in 2023.

References 

Sri Lankan businesspeople
Sri Lankan accountants
Women accountants
Sri Lankan netball players
Sri Lankan women activists
Sri Lankan women academics
Sri Lankan feminists
Alumni of Holy Family Convent, Bambalapitiya
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people