Channa de Silva - CEO, LankaClear
ICT industry veteran Channa de Silva was appointed General Manager
and Chief Executive Officer of LankaClear recently. He took over from
Sunimal Weerasooriya who left after an eight-year stint.
LankaClear, backed by the Central Bank operates Sri Lanka's national
payment network and is entrusted with developing the platform for
faster, secure and accessible payment solutions to the nation while
harnessing greater financial efficiency and inclusivity.
An old boy of Royal College, Colombo, de Silva obtained his BSc. (Honours)
and MSc. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the State
University of New York, USA specializing in Data Communication. He also
holds an MBA from the Postgraduate Institute of Management (PIM) Sri
Lanka.
With over 22 years of experience encompassing a spectrum of
industries, de Silva brings with him a wealth of knowledge, expertise
and business acumen to drive operations and growth of LankaClear and
take the organization to the next elevation, with the role out of
several ground-breaking payment solutions during the next few years.
Before joining LankaClear he headed the Sri Lankan and Maldivian
operations of Singapore based ICT consultancy - Thakral One as the
Senior Vice President. He was instrumental in introducing IBM's software
universe to Sri Lanka and developing IBM's software business during his
tenure as the DGM - Software Group of IBM Sri Lanka. de Silva also
served as the Director - Enterprise Business and Public Sector at
Microsoft. He held several CxO portfolios during his career including
CEO at several local IT companies earlier in his career.
de Silva designed Sri Lanka's first ever webmaster with the
development of Sri Lanka's first commercial web site lanka.net (1994)
and was responsible for setting up the first ever dedicated internet
connection in Sri Lanka in 1995.
He also played a pivotal role in ensuring that a Language Interface
Pack was built in Sinhala and Tamil for Microsoft Windows and Microsoft
Office in 2007.
NB: Last week we inadvertently carried a wrong picture of the CEO of
LankaClear, Channa de Silva. The error is regretted. |