Chulendra has over 19 years of multi-sectoral experience in carrying out financial due diligence, financial and operational feasibility studies, organizational sourcing, business process optimization, sustainability integration and enterprise risk management.
He is a Board Member of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)'s Global Sustainability Standards Board (GSSB) headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and also serves as a member of the Board Advisory Committee on ESG for SLASSCOM. Chulendra was also a technical committee member of the Integrated Corporate Reporting Committee of the Institute of the Chartered Accounts Sri Lanka which released the 'Preparer's Guide to Integrated Corporate Reporting' in July 2015. He has also been a key speaker at various Sustainability forums both locally and internationally.
During his employment at John Keells Holdings PLC, acting in the capacity of Vice President, and Head of Sustainability, Enterprise Risk Management & Group Initiatives, he was involved in entrenching Sustainability practices within the Group through the implementation of a Group-wide sustainability management framework. This involved transformational culture change programs, linking of the Group's risk management processes to incorporate sustainability impacts, introduction of systems and processes for sustainability performance and risk monitoring as well as sustainability and integrated reporting. In addition, Chulendra also lead the Sustainability division in establishing a sustainability management accounting process where areas for improvement were identified by comparing current sustainability performance against international benchmarks. Sustainability assurance, risk assurance and Sustainability training programs were also carried out to ensure high quality triple bottom line information for strategy formulation and operational decision making. At JKH he lead the transitioning the JKH Sustainability Report from the GRI Guidelines 3.1 to the GRI G4 Guidelines.
Chulendra was also instrumental in establishing a comprehensive Sustainability Management Framework at the Walkers CML Group and lead the Group in developing its first integrated report for 2015/16, which was independently assured by DNV GL and also obtained the Materiality Disclosures check of GRI, within a short span of 9 months. The Walkers CML Group also won the Gold Award, for the first time in 6 years at the CA Sri Lanka Annual Reporting Awards 2016, for this very first Integrated Report. In 2016/17, he was instrumental in adopting the GRI Standards to the MTD Walkers Integrated Annual Report.
Chulendra is a Certified Sustainability Practitioner, a Certified Sustainability Assurance Practitioner, and an ISO14001 Lead Auditor in Environmental Management Systems. He also holds a first-class honours degree in Science from the University of Colombo, is an Associate Member of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) UK, holds an MBA from the University of Southern Queensland Australia, and is a Chartered Financial Analysts (CFA) Charter holder (USA).
Charith has over 18 years of experience in Sustainability, Risk Management, Corporate Planning and Strategy across multiple industries in South Asia and Australia. He is one of the pioneer Sustainability practitioners in Sri Lanka and was the first to publish a 'GRI checked' report in 2010. Charith has presented at numerous forums both locally and internationally and is currently a member of the Textile & Apparel working group formed to develop the GRI sector supplement by the Global Sustainability Standards Board (GSSB).
Charith's career in Sustainability began in 2006 where he was accountable to integrate Sustainability into the operations at Dialog Axiata. He went on to develop Dialog Axiata's first Sustainability report which was based on the GRI G3 guidelines. At Dialog, Charith had also the challenge of creating a distinction between CSR (philanthropy) and Sustainability and established a separate function within the organisation.
In 2009, Charith was entrusted with leading Sustainability Integration and Risk at John Keells Holdings. Here, Charith successfully introduced and integrated sustainability throughout the group and published the first 'GRI checked' Sustainability Report in Sri Lanka which was adjudged best report by both ACCA and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in 2010. He also introduced the ISO 31000 risk management framework while creating synergies between Sustainability and Risk management for the first time within the organisation.
While at JKH, Charith was invited to serve on the Sri Lankan mirror committee which contributed towards the development of the ISO standard for Social Responsibility (ISO 26000). Charith also introduced Green Globe certification for the Leisure sector at JKH and was able to develop initiatives which resulted in significant bottom-line gains. He was also the point person for United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) at JKH.
From late 2010 to 2015, Charith was employed at Warringah Council in Sydney where he was responsible for its Strategy, Policy, Process improvement and Performance management. He was also instrumental in developing processes at Warringah Council for Business Planning, Policy implementation and the statutory reporting as per the state legislation. Charith was accountable for publishing the annual Community Strategic Plan which disclosed the Council's annual performance which included both financial and sustainability aspects as well as its future commitments. While at Warringah Council, Charith was invited to sit on the state government (NSW) steering committee that established the Local Government performance framework in light of amalgamations and consolidation of all Local Government bodies in NSW.
In returning to Sri Lanka Charith was appointed as head of Social Sustainability and MAS Holdings where he introduced the GRI framework and Social Sustainability metrics for monitoring its performance and reporting.
Charith currently is an Associate Director at KPMG Australia and works in the space of ESG advisory and assurance, for multiple ASX200 clients. He also specializes in ESG frameworks and standards such as GRI, ISSB, SASB, TCFD, ESRS and continues to expand his knowledge and expertise in this space, especially in providing interoperability solutions to his clients.
Charith is an alumnus of the Manchester Metropolitan University where he read for a BSc. (Hons) Business. He is also a member of the Institute of Certified Management Accountants, Australia (CMA). He is a GRI certified sustainability reporting professional, and has undergone training on National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting (NGER), Environmental Management ISO 14000, Project Management Professional (PMP) and is certified in Risk Management ISO 31000 and ISO45000. In 2017, Charith was accepted for an on-site Executive Education programme on Sustainability Leadership at Harvard University.