Faces of Leadership

How do you, as a current or future leader, help to shape a better world? 

There's one sentence I love: "Making the familiar strange and the strange familiar". This saying is against ethnocentrism. In ethnocentrism, everybody judges other people by their own standards. That causes lots of imperialist connotations and exploitation. If you understand other cultures and diversity, you must make the strange familiar to your original perspective. This is one of the ways to make the world better: "Make the familiar strange and the strange familiar".  

What is the biggest challenge you've overcome in your professional life?

I had done most of my education in Korea, and then I went to the United States to pursue my Ph.D. Through my first class, I was very surprised [to learn] that people talk about ethnicity very importantly and very extensively. But, to someone like me who had been living in Korea, a monolithic society, ethnicity and multiculturalism were very strange. But the people in the United States talk about their ethnicity very importantly and very extensively. It is some kind of challenge to understand other cultures, other perspectives, and diversity.

What does being a "current or future leader" mean to you?

Leadership is nothing external. Leadership to me is self-leadership which means you take personal accountabilities for all your decisions and actions. You don't blame any other person and you don't get into a trap called the “victim loop”.

How do you, as a current or future leader, help to shape a better world? 

In terms of shaping the world, I support women in SMEs with capacity building, coaching, mentorship, and networking access to help them establish businesses, survive in the businesses, and grow or sustain their businesses. This is my gift, my contribution, and my footprint to Sri Lanka and to the world.

What or who inspires you in your work?

It's more about what than who. Because I think that people themselves can achieve a lot, but it is what they do that labels their success. I think that everybody who's in a position to change a broader picture, a global picture, should do that and use her or his talents to address the difficulties [that] others are facing. Talents should not be [used to] increase our wealth or position of power, but rather as a commodity or something that we can share. When we talk about inspiring, we do see a lot of movements in the world. We see that human rights have become a norm, which I find critical, and that we can finally agree on the core values that we as civilizations should stand for, all of which was not common in the past centuries. This is just a starting point. It inspires me to see that ordinary people recognize that we are one and we can work with each other. Now what we need to overcome is those who stand in the way because of their personal interest.

What does being a "current or future leader" mean to you? 

A leader is anyone, irrespective of position, irrespective of origin, and irrespective of education. Anyone who can bring light to the future of this civilization, who can assist our youngest ones or new generations to find peace and to find stability and to find progress in a meaningful, natural way. Anybody who achieves that is a leader. I would hate to label only politicians as leaders, because everyone, each one of us, has our own families, our own societies, and our own communities. If we achieve anything, even in this respect, this is more than enough for this civilization to succeed.