Suranga Priyashantha

Head of Growth - Brighte

Suranga Priyashantha is a practising digital Marketer based in Sydney, Australia. Suranga holds over 16 years of industry experience both at strategic and functional levels in Digital Marketing, eCommerce, Training and Consultancy. He currently serves as the Director of Digital Marketing and Growth at Afterpay one of the fastest-growing global Fin-tech companies currently operating in Australia, NewZealand, United Kingdom and the United States.

Suranga founded Asia Pacific Institute of Digital Marketing (formerly eBusiness Academy) in 2009 through which he pioneered digital marketing education and training in Sri Lanka. He has partnered with a number of global training and educational institutions and digital platforms including General Assembly, Facebook and Google. Through various initiatives such as seminars, webinars, workshops, industry panels, course programs and consultancy he has trained over 1500 business executives, entrepreneurs and students in the Asia Pacific region.

Suranga started his digital marketing career in 2004 as an eCommerce Executive at Roomsnet International, a leading online travel agency. Having lead a number of innovative campaigns and product innovations over 6 years he finished at Roomsnet as the General Manager eMarketing. He then joined Netstarter (Sri Lanka) as the Head of search marketing and later joined Netstarter (Australia) and served as the Head of analytics and performance optimisation. In 2014, he joined Fairfax Media, the leading news media publisher in Australia as the Head of Digital Marketing.

Suranga obtained his bachelor’s degree in Marketing Management from the University of Jayewardenepura and obtained a Post Graduate Diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing, United Kingdom.

Amitha Amarasinghe

Co-founder / Chief Executive Officer - APIDM

A Digital Marketing professional with over 15 years of experience, Amitha is one of the earliest adopters to the digital transformation wave in the profession of marketing. He is one of the most experienced digital strategists in Sri Lanka, and spearheaded digital strategy for some leading local and multinational brands.

He started his career in digital marketing in 2004, at a time when the topic of digital marketing wasn't mainstream among the marketing fraternity in Sri Lanka. He joined a Colombo-based online travel agency (Roomsnet.com), catering to European travelers, as an eCommerce executive and held the position of eCommerce manager when he finished his six-year tenure with the company.

In 2010, Amitha joined the global advertising giant Ogilvy as the head of Neo@Ogilvy, a new business unit specializing in digital advertising. Under his leadership, Neo@Ogilvy grew into being the pioneering digital agency in Sri Lanka serving many local and multinational companies. He is a visiting lecturer at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura on the subject of Digital Marketing, and he is the lead trainer at the Asia Pacific Institute of Digital Marketing (APIDM). He has addressed many forums in Digital Marketing and technology field held in Colombo, Mumbai, and Cambodia. Amitha obtained his bachelor's degree in Marketing from the University of Sri Jayewardenepura and obtained a Master of Business Administration degree from the Postgraduate Institute of Management at the same university.

Udara Dharmasena

VP – Client Success, Facebook ASP - Roar Global

An enthusiastic digital marketing professional based in Sri Lanka, Udara Dharmasena is currently working for Facebook ASP at Roar Global as the VP - Client Success and is also a lecturer at Asia Pacific Institute of Digital Marketing (APIDM). A strategic thinker and a marketer in lieu with all the modern global trends, Udara has played a significant role in conceptualizing, planning and implementing digital marketing strategies for reputed brands across Sri Lanka.

A Post Graduate Diploma holder in Marketing from SLIM, Udara is known for his ability to think out of the box and generate ideas that give real results. He is well known as an individual who likes to keep abreast with all the new digital marketing news and trends as well as share it with those to whom it matters the most.

With plenty of prior experience working in non-government organizations sector, Udara has played an undeniably important role in the Mobile for Development (Mobile4D) Projects implemented by Sarvodaya-Fusion in bringing Smartphone technologies to rural parts of Sri Lanka.

He also went on to win the Cannes Young Lions competition (2017) in Cyber Category in Sri Lanka along with his team member and they competed at the global competition in Cannes, France.

A dedicated and committed individual, Udara’s specialty relies in Paid media and he is an active digital marketing trainer.

Gayathri Seneviratne

Strategic Account Manager - Indian Ocean & Subcontinent - Amadeus Hospitality

Gayathri holds a decade of experience in fields of Digital Marketing, Online Branding and Communications Strategy, eCommerce and Online Revenue Optimization. She currently works for Amadeus Hospitality, one of the largest travel technology companies in the world, by providing strategic direction to luxury hotels and resorts in the Indian Sub-continent and Indian Ocean.She is professionally a Member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (MCIM) and is a certified Google Partner. She holds a Master of Business Administration from Staffordshire University and a Bachelor of Science in Business Computing and Information Systems by the University of Wales.

Chamara Peiris

Founder & CEO - Next Digital Innovations (Pvt) Ltd

Chamara has over 15+ years of experience in the Digital and Technology space and has contributed both his knowledge and experience in tech startups in the past 10+ years.

He has successfully led and scale teams to design and bring new ideas to life and has had the rare and valuable opportunity of having co-founded 2 software consulting firms which catered to clients in UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Canada, and Latvia which invariably continue to gather knowledge and expertise in tech space.

Chamara is currently the Funder & CEO at Next Digital Innovations (Pvt) Ltd. Prior to starting Next Digital Innovations, Chamara was the Chief Operating Officer at Moneyworkz.lk. His exposure includes positions such as Chief Operating Officer at zMessenger, Chief Technology Officer at Yoho Bed, Director Marketing at Cinergix/Creately and Calcey Technologies. He Co-founded Xiteb (Pvt) Ltd and Minlo Technologies (Pvt) Ltd.

Infas Iqbal

Chief Marketing Officer - ikman.lk / Saltside

Infas is an expert in data-driven digital marketing with 10+ years of experience in the digital domain with hands-on exposures not only in Sri Lanka but also in different regions such as Middle East, Africa & South Asia.

He is currently Heading the global online marketing & ad operations for Saltside group which operates leading classified platforms in Sri Lanka (ikman.lk), Bangladesh (Bikroy.com) & Ghana (Tonaton.com) he has exposure working.

Prior to Joining Saltside in 2014 he was part of founding team at Neo@Ogilvy Sri Lanka driving digital marketing strategies & executions for multinational clients from various industries, Infas Iqbal holds Business Administration degree from Staffordshire University, UK

Emma Debeljak

Head Of Content - Digital Silk

Emma leads a team of content marketers at a global digital agency headquartered in New York. She has worked with companies worldwide and across sectors, from Spain to Australia, and from IT to fashion, developing end-to-end content marketing strategies as well as delivering specialized content marketing services.

Minoli Almeida

Founder & Content Marketing Consultant - The Mini Project, Singapore

Minoli is an experienced content marketing consultant and a digital content strategist with over 15 years of experience in the industry and she helps brands create a strong content strategy to reach and influence audiences.

She is currently working as the Founder & the Content Marketing Consultant at The Mini Project, Singapore. In addition to several years of hands-on experience in content marketing, Minoli has more than a decade of experience in branding, marketing communications, influencer marketing, social media marketing and digital community building.