PIMA in collaboration with PIM organized the inaugural memorial oration for the late Prof. Uditha Liyanage, Sri Lanka’s finest marketing guru. Prof. Liyanage had played a key role as a senior faculty member in Marketing at PIM for over 20 years and had also served as the Director of PIM and Chairman of the Institute’s Board of Management.

Prof. Uditha Liyanage incidentally was the first-ever Sri Lankan Honorary Fellow of the Asia Marketing Federation and was a Chartered Marketer and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM). He was an Adjunct Professor of Management of University of Canberra, Australia and counted over 15 years of experience in industry, having held senior marketing management positions and on the boards of some of the leading companies in the country such as Commercial Bank, DIMO, Chemanex and Ceylon Cold Stores. He had published many articles on branding and strategic marketing in leading journals, both here and abroad, and had addressed numerous local and international conferences.

The keynote speaker at the occasion was Deshamanya Dr. Mahesh Amalean, the chairman and Co- Founder of MAS Holdings. The topic of his address centered on the subject of “resilience to change – building a legacy brand, “where he outlined the salient factors that has contributed to the success of the MAS brand.
Dr. Amalean began by giving an insight into his relationship with Prof. Liyanage and of the many engagements and projects they had worked on together. He added that empowering employees and giving them accountability was something professor Liyanage had been passionate about. MAS collaborated with professor Liyanage to create the Postgraduate Diploma in Apparel Marketing at CIM and today has over 35 MBA graduates at all level of management at the organization. They further introduced an internal brand “Talent20 “a system that captured the entire life cycle of an executive which has paved the way for visibility of their contributions to the organization and resulted in the opportunity of rewarding them accordingly.

The event was participated by many leading personalities in the field of marketing and education and showcased the impact left by Prof. Liyanage as an unmatchable, exemplary personality that raised the bar of marketing to a new pedestal in the nation.