Tourism personality retires to enter academia
22 January 2016 05:29 am
Sri Lanka Convention Bureau (SLCB) Chief Executive Vipula Wanigasekera is to step down to pursue a full time academic career from next month.
Having served the private sector for 15 years in trade, sales, shipping, exports and marketing, Wanigasekera joined the Tourist Board as Director - Marketing
in 1995.
His contribution under difficult circumstances where tourism marketing had to be focused on a continuous ‘ image correction’ , was recognized when he became one of the four senior diplomats selected by the Public Service Commission in 1997 through an independent selection process.
Thereafter he functioned as Counselor in Malaysia for 3 years and was cross posted to Norway to open the mission in Oslo where he continued for 5 years as its first Head of the Mission under
two governments.
Upon his return in 2005 Wanigasekera rejoined the Tourism Authority as Chief Executive officer of SLCB.
Wanigasekera has 3 more years before retirement but instead decided to contribute to the business academia keeping in line with the principle to pave way for younger generation to take up responsibilities and perform.
Vipula Wanigasekera, a CIM London qualified marketer, holds MBA from the PIM Sri Jayawardenepura. As a writer, he has written over 50 tourism related articles covering areas that are yet to be positioned and presented to future tourists through various communication modes.
He is a fully qualified classical Karnatic vocalist and his album with the lyrics by the Poet Yohanka Jayasuriya - ‘ Sithijaya’ went viral online. He has just finished his movie script which he hopes to present to an international Cinematographer.
He entered the spiritual arena as a meditation teacher after launching his book ‘Pointers to enlightenment’ two years ago. Since then he has conducted over 110 meditations sessions for tourist groups following the first invitation extended by the Sidhalepa Resort.
The Independent Television Network introduced ‘Finding Oneself’ on Poya days featuring him as the key resource person and he appears regularly on the Buddhist channel in the program ‘DhammaHadaya’.