MEET THE FOUNDERS

Formerly he held a senior position in the Government of Sri Lanka as Advisor to the Minister of Development Strategies and International trade, where he led national policy implementation initiatives on trade competitiveness, export diversification and innovation, and investment promotion. In the private sector, he serves in a non-executive capacity on the boards of Seylan Bank PLC, Fairfirst Insurance Ltd, HNB Finance PLC, and he chairs the investment committee of a high net-worth family office. Anushka also serves on the Board of the Sri Lankan chapter of the Global Entrepreneurship Network.

He has served on the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on Innovation Ecosystems. Until recently he also served on the Monetary Policy Consultative Committee of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. Anushka holds a Masters in Economics from University of Leeds, BSc in Economics from University College London, and is an alumnus of the Harvard Kennedy School’s ‘Leading Economic Growth’ executive programme. He has worked in South Korea at the Korea Development Institute in Seoul as part of the Asia Development Fellows, supported by The Asia Foundation.

At present, she is a Co-Investigator leading the research work in Colombo for two multi-country research projects funded by the UKRI’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), studying human-infrastructure interactions in the context of urban crises and urban change. She is also currently working as the Asia Consultant for the Bank Information Center in Washington, D.C. Iromi serves on the Board of Trustees of The Asia Foundation as a Term Trustee, and on the Board of Directors of the Centre for Equality and Justice, a women’s rights organisation in Sri Lanka. In 2019 Iromi was a Commissioner on the People’s Commission on Land initiated by the People’s Alliance for Right to Land (PARL) in Sri Lanka. She was a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), a Sri Lankan public policy research and advocacy think tank from 2008 - 2017 and headed CPA’s survey research unit. She is the founder and curator of the Right to the city Sri Lanka initiative; and combines research, ongoing documentation, photography and video to provide alternative narratives to the development discourse in Sri Lanka, with a focus on city making in Colombo.

Iromi has presented her work as well as been invited to speak about her research at many international conferences, and has written extensively in local and international academic journals, civil society publications and mainstream media. In 2017 Iromi was selected as an Asia Foundation Development Fellow. She was a Fulbright Professional Scholar in 2015 and was based at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C as an Academic Visitor at the Institute’s Center on International Development and Governance. Iromi has been a consultant and researcher for various organisations including the Secretariat For Muslims and the Law and Society Trust in Sri Lanka, the International Crisis Group, UN-Habitat, and UNDP. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology, Sociology and Economics from Christ College, Bangalore and a Post Graduate Diploma in Development Studies from the Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Colombo.