# Kasturi Chellaraja Wilson

Kasturi Angela Chellaraja Wilson is the Chief Operating Officer (Head of APAC) of 5hour International Corporation.
Additionally, she holds positions as a Non-Executive Director at Capital Alliance Holdings Limited and NDB Bank PLC and serves on the Board of the Ceylon Chambers of Commerce. Notably, she made history as the first female Group CEO of a listed conglomerate in Sri Lanka when she was appointed as Group CEO for Hemas Holdings PLC in 2020
Kasturi is a dual sport national athlete, having represented Sri Lanka in both netball and basketball, and Captained the National Basketball Team in 1989.. Kasturi is a single mother of two boys; Ashvindh and Amrith Wilson

## Career

Kasturi is a former student of Holy Family Convent, Bambalapitiya. She is also an avid sportswoman and was an active member of the National Netball and Basketball Teams. A Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants and an alumna of the Executive Leadership Program at Harvard Business School, Kasturi started her career at Someswaran Jayewickreme & Co. (currently, Deloitte) in 1988 as an Audit Trainee. She also served as an Audit Manager and as Director of Consultancy prior to being appointed as Financial Controller at Aramex Airborne Lanka. For a brief period, she also served as Financial Controller at Confifi Hotels. She joined Hemas Holdings PLC in March 2002 as Director Finance at HemTours and continued to hold many senior management positions, including Chief Processing Officer and Managing Director of the Hemas Transportation Sector. Her portfolio also included Hemas Aviation, Hemas Logistics and Hemas Maritime Services. In 2016, she was appointed as the Managing Director of Hemas Pharmaceuticals, Hemas Surgicals and Hemas Diagnostics and in 2020 she became the Group CEO of Hemas Holdings PLC and became the first female Group CEO of a public quoted conglomerate in Sri Lanka.
She serves on the board of National Development Bank PLC and Capital Alliance Holdings Limited as a Non-Executive Director and on the board of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce. She was appointed as the Regional Champion for the World Bank for South Asia in April 2022 and UNICEF Sri Lanka Business Council (Child Rights and Business Principles) in April 2023.
She is also the immediate Past President of the Sri Lanka Chamber of the Pharmaceutical Industry and was the first female to be elected as President of the Sri Lanka Chamber of the Pharmaceutical Industry (SLCPI). She was a council member of the National Sports Council of Sri Lanka till March 2022. She has also served on boards of Hemas Holdings and several Hemas subsidiaries in the healthcare, consumer and mobility sectors, SLID ( Sri Lanka Institute of Directors ), CIMA Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka, the American Chamber of Commerce in Sri Lanka and Lankan Angels Network (LAN) – a leading start up eco system in Sri Lanka.

## Awards

In 2019, Kasturi was recognised as being one of the twelve Top Women Change-Makers in the country by the Parliament of Sri Lanka and USAID. Kasturi was also the recipient of the Career Role Model Award in 2013 by Women in Management, Sri Lanka and the IFC; a World Bank Group. In 2016, she also won the Women Super Achiever Award at the World Women Leadership Congress Awards, India. She was also recognized as one of the ten ‘Wise Women’ impactful leaders of Sri Lanka by the Ministry of Skills and Vocational Education in 2022 and was named as the ‘Business Leader of the Year’ at the SAP Dare to Dream Awards in 2023.