Mrs Myrtle Perera, Vice-Chairperson, Marga Institute:- Mrs Perera has been engaged in research related to gender issues since 1979 at the Marga Institute.

Some of the key research areas: Gender roles; Women and work; Female-headed Households; Female Migration; Gender dimensions of Poverty;

Ageing and Social Security.;

Gender and Ageing.

Dr Lloyd Fernando:- Chairman, Gamani Corea Foundation and Governing Council Member of the Marga Institute. Senior Consultant Public Policy, Postgraduate Institute of Management at Sri Jayewardenapura University.

He was the Chairman of the Marga Institute from 1998 to 2006. Former positions are -Executive Director of the Asian Development Bank,
State Secretary, Ministry of Policy Planning and Implementation and Director-General,
National Planning Department.

Ahilan Kadirgamar:- Ahilan Kadirgamar is Senior Lecturer, Department of Sociology, University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from the Graduate Center, City University of New York, a MA in Economics from the New School for Social Research and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

He is a fortnightly columnist in the Daily Mirror, an Editorial Board Member of the Sri Lanka Journal of Social Sciences and a Board Member of Himal Southasian Magazine. His research interests include agrarian change, co-operatives and women’s livelihoods, and regularly writes on the political economy of Sri Lanka in forums such as The Hindu in India.

He is currently the Honorary Chair of the Northern Co-operative Development Bank and a member of the Jaffna Peoples Forum for Co-existence. He served on the Central Bank of Sri Lanka appointed committee to draft the Economic Development Framework for a Northern Province Master Plan (August 2018).

Dr Neavis Morais:- Dr Neavis Morais, is a Development Economist with wide international exposure. He completed his PhD at the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand and the Master’s Degree in Economics at the University of Colombo. Currently, he serves at the Open University of Sri Lanka as the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.

He has extensive experience in teaching, research, academic administration and national development frontiers and remains actively involved in policy development work of the public sector, the private sector, and the Non- governmental organizations both local and international.

Indrani M.M. Talagala:- Indrani M.M. Talagala has obtained her BA from the University of Ceylon and  MPhil (Education), and Ph.D. (Education) from the University of Colombo.

Indrani served as an academic in the Faculty of Education, the Open University of Sri Lanka, and later became the Head of the Department of Early Childhood and Primary Education, The Open University of Sri Lanka.

Currently, she is serving as a member of the National Education Commission, Sri Lanka, and a member of the National Coordination Committee on ECCD established in the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Preschool, and Primary Education and School Infrastructure. She is also an elected member of the Faculty Board of the Faculty of Education, and a visiting academic of the Faculty of Education of the Open University of Sri Lanka.

She has served as a temporary consultant to the World Bank in 2015 and as a visiting academic (titled as the Foreign Faculty), in the MSc in Early Childhood Development programme, conducted by the Institute of Educational Development, BRAC University, Bangladesh.

Dr Amarasena Gamathige Amarasiri – MA in Sociology from Utah State University and PhD in Sociology from Colorado State University, United States of America was Senior Social Sector/Resettlement Specialist at the Sri Lanka Resident Mission, ADB from 2002 to 2010. After retirement, he became the external monitoring expert of a large scale infrastructure development project in Sri Lanka and a consultant to the World Bank and ADB on involuntary resettlement and social safeguard issues in Sri Lanka. He held senior positions at the Open University of Sri Lanka, International Water Management Institute, National Development Bank, and the Mahaweli Authority. He also worked at the Marga Institute as Research Officer from 1972 to 1981. His professional interests are research on involuntary resettlement and project monitoring and have co-authored two books and several research papers on distance learning, involuntary resettlement, and water management.

Dr Sunari Senaratne:- BA Hons in Social Anthropology with Development Studies from the University of Sussex; MSc in Anthropology and Development from the London School of Economics (LSE); PhD in Anthropology and Sociology from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Dr Senaratne’s PhD was in the area of Disaster Studies and focused on the impact of the tsunami (2004) on a fishing community on Sri Lanka’s south-western coast. Her major area of research since the completion of her PhD has been the social and political aspects of agriculture.

She is also interested in the social implications of the proposed Megalopolis Initiative in the Western Province of Sri Lanka.

Professor Tilak Abeysinghe is the Research Director of the Gamani Corea Foundation. Before joining the GCF in July 2017, he was a professor of economics at the National University of Singapore. He was also a visiting professor at Kyoto University and Peradeniya University. He was the Director of the Singapore Centre for Applied and Policy Economics and an Executive Committee member of the Department of Economics. He continues his affiliation with the NUS. He obtained his PhD in Economics/Econometrics from the University of Manitoba, Canada.

His research interests lie across a range of theoretical and applied topics which include the Singapore economy, housing affordability, social epidemiology and quantitative health research. He has published in highly reputed international journals in the field.

Dr Nirmal De Silva – is an Associate Professor of Business Administration and an award-winning ‘C’ Level Business Professional |Board Director| Entrepreneur|Strategy Consultant|Public Speaker|Women & Youth Empowerment Advocate|Power Play Strategist |Impact Investor|Real Estate Expert & Mentor. He is a thought leader & integral part of the Startup, SME & Social Enterprise Ecosystem in Asia. His academic and professional qualifications are:-Doctorate in Philosophy (PhD) – Reading, Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA) the Philippines, CMA (Australia), MBA(Australia) PG Dip M (CIM, UK), FCIM (UK), Chartered Marketer (UK), BBusMgt (Australia), Master Project Manager (USA), FABE (UK), FinstAM (UK), MinstSMM (UK), FCPM (Sri Lanka), MSLIM (Sri Lanka), FAAPM (USA)

Nishandeny Ratnam:- Nishandeny Ratnam has a strong background in the field of rule of law and good governance with contextualised work and research experience on the issues related to Sri Lanka. She carries extensive experience in the government and international development sector in Sri Lanka. She has been a prosecutor at the Attorney General’s Department of Sri Lanka, a Legal Advisor and later a Project Manager in the Legal Aid Commission of Sri Lanka, a Senior Legal and Enforcement Officer at the Consumer Affairs Authority and a Senior Legal Analyst at the Office on Missing Persons. Her exposure in the international non-governmental organisations includes being part of the Women’s Housing Rights Program of the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions and being a Manager of the Advocacy and Legal Advice Centre of the Transparency International Sri Lanka. She was part of the technical experts of Chemonics International in implementing a rule of law reform project funded by USAID. She was also part of the consultant team of Marga Institute to review the results framework on the Sustainable Development Goals 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions) of the UNDP Sri Lanka. She has completed international internships at Asylum Access Thailand and the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney of Midland, Michigan, in the United States. Currently, she is a senior project manager at Search for Common Ground, where she is exposed to non-adversarial conflict resolution methods. 

She is trilingual with the local languages used in Sri Lanka and worked across different regions/districts of Sri Lanka. She is currently an elected executive member to the Asia Pacific Master Alumni Association for Human Rights and Democratization and an appointed member of the Board of Directors of the Centre for Equality and Justice (CEJ) in Sri Lanka.

Ms Ratnam has a bachelor’s degree in law (LL. B) from the University of Colombo and a master’s degree in law (LL.M) from the Ohio Northern University. She was called to the Bar as an Attorney-at-Law in Sri Lanka in December 2011. She also holds a master’s degree in Human Rights and Democratization from the University of Sydney and a post-graduate diploma in International Relations from Bandaranayake Centre for International Studies. She received Excellence for the Future award in the study of Comparative Constitutional Law in 2015 at Ohio Northern University. 

Thilal Nanayakkara:- With a Master’s Degree in Business Management, Thilal has shifted from the private sector to the development sector where he has carved a niche as an environmental communications and advocacy specialist. While working closely with government ministries and departments through UN and World Bank projects, he has been able to leverage his experience in advertising, printing and magazine publishing, as well as marketing research, to tailor-make unique communication and advocacy campaigns. Realising the grave challenges that are posed due to environmental degradation, Thilal has made it his life mission to share knowledge, empower, and effectively engage diverse groups of stakeholders – including the general public – in various aspects of the environment with a focus on prompting appropriate collective action. His experience in rolling out communication campaigns via traditional, below-the-line, and social media has made Thilal a much sought-after communications specialist whose strength is in translating highly technical information into bite-sized messages that can be digested by the general public.