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A future-ready Sri Lanka with SLIM

20 Oct 2021

With education at the heart of any country, it is essential that it invigorates and stimulates better future aspirations for budding marketers across the country. Adapting to the challenges presented by the pandemic, e-learning initiatives were organised by schools and universities worldwide. This development has, in turn, had a significant impact on institutions such as the Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing (SLIM), as global, internationally acclaimed education giants are now directly accessible to local students through online-based study programmes that were introduced during the pandemic. Understanding the importance of furthering education, while making marketers future-ready and as the national body for marketing, SLIM launched their “SLIM Future-Ready Marketer” webinar series under the “SLIM Future-Ready Sri Lanka” initiative, which spanned over two months. These eight webinars, which concluded in early September, included five local speakers, three international speakers, and recorded over 1,100 participants. Moderated by Rainco (Pvt.) Ltd. CEO and Director Ahamed M. Aroos, the esteemed speakers from the webinar were Nestle Lanka Senior Vice President – Marketing (F&B) Makshoodh Meerasaibu, LinkedIn Senior Digital Marketing Manager Kruthika Sri Krishna, La Trobe University PhD Researcher Haritha Thilakarathne, Singer Sri Lanka Director – Marketing Shanil Perera, ERA Communications Managing Director and Campaign Asia APAC PR Professional of the Year 2020 Anthony Larmon, Isobar Vice President Chamith Buthgamuwa, HSBC Canada Manager – Digital Messaging Experience and Sales Nadheera Udawatte, and Microsoft APAC CMO Lead Stacy Seah. The webinar series was of great value to all young and adult audiences, as well as the business community ranging from conglomerates to small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) from across the sectors of consumer durables, tourism, finance, industry, export, retail, and trade. It also benefited the state sector as it gave a broad overview of a way forward for the economy. The second phase of the Future-Ready Sri Lanka initiative, under SLIM’s “Restart Sri Lanka” national campaign, is on the horizon. Sharing about it, SLIM President Thilanka Abeywardena stated: “This national campaign was envisioned to focus on building a knowledge economy of the country and aims at encouraging target audiences to challenge the dependent, risk-averse mentality and enforce an entrepreneurial, innovative mindset equipped with right skills and knowledge to drive Sri Lanka towards economic prosperity. We hope to inspire a future generation of marketers to consider SLIM as their trusted institute to commence education from school entrepreneurship societies upwards on their route to being future-ready marketers of Sri Lanka. The initiation of the webinar series is to motivate Sri Lanka’s future generations to adopt thinking patterns that align with global contexts and business functions, with the hope of inspiring generations of future-ready Sri Lankans.” With the second phase of the initiative, the second season of the “SLIM Future-Ready Marketer” webinar series will be launched, with more thought-provoking topics and featuring insights of more renowned local and international speakers. “The necessity for innovative thinking and an innovative mindset with enhanced skills and knowledge is indisputable. Keeping in mind our ‘Future-Ready Sri Lanka’ campaign, we hope to create and inspire new aspirations towards entrepreneurship, starting new businesses (start-ups), the introduction of innovative products, processes, or services, as well as an overall knowledge-based business mindset. With SLIM as the trusted marketing body to be associated with as a member, interested individuals have access to a range of useful services for national events, training, and so on,” explained SLIM CEO and Executive Director Sanath Senanayake.


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