In an industry where the female representation is visibly low, BMD sat down to have a chat with Gayani de Alwis, a prominent Supply Chain Professional who had overcome the traditional barriers in a male dominant industry.
Gayani is the Chairperson of the Chartered Institute of Logistics & Transport (CILT) and the Founding Chairperson of Women in Logistics & Transport (WiLAT) Sri Lanka. She was the former Director, Customer Service and Management Committee member of Unilever Sri Lanka. She was the first female Director for Supply Chain and also the first Global Lead Auditor appointed from South Asia in Unilever.
She holds an MBA from the Postgraduate Institute of Management (PIM) of University of Sri Jayewardenepura Sri Lanka and MSc in Food Process Engineering from University of Reading, UK. She did her undergraduate studies in Chemical Engineering from University of Moratuwa before moving to UK to complete her post graduate studies. She is also a Certified Supply Chain Manager (CSCM) from ISCEA, USA. She is a Chartered member of CILT and Global Vice Chairperson responsible for South Asia for WiLAT. She is the first female Fellow of Institute of Supply and Materials Management (ISMM) in their 42year history and a Board member of Women’s Chamber of Industry and Commerce (WCIC).
She has received, “Women at the Helm Award for Most Outstanding Female Business Leader of the Year” at PIMA National Management Awards, “Distinguished Mentor and Role Model” award from WiLAT Nigeria for her efforts in promoting mentoring globally and most recently Women in Management (WIM) “Top 50 Professional & Career Women Achievement” Gold Award for her Career Achievement in Logistics and Supply Chain.
She is a Consultant to the World Bank and many leading blue-chip companies and a visiting faculty member for postgraduate programs in local and foreign universities.
Her passion is to disseminate knowledge and mentor female supply chain professionals to make a meaningful contribution to the society. She works tirelessly to promote supply chain and logistics management as a career choice in the country.
Tell us about the early years of your life
I am the eldest of a family of three. I have a sister and a brother. Both our parents have a lot of siblings so we grew up with this large circle of cousins and even now we are a closely-knit family. During school holidays we made it a point to visit our grand parents’ ancestral home in Kandy and we had fond memories of our childhood. My mother was a housewife. Our parents never forced us to do any thing but
gave us the freedom to do what we want. They always pushed us to do well in our studies. My primary education was at Anula Vidyalaya and I went to Visaka Vidyalaya for my secondary education after passing the scholarship exam. While my siblings were good in sports and extracurricular activities, I was more inclined towards studies and I played a bit of tennis in school. I would say I was a studious
student. I did well in my OLs and chose to do mathematics for my ALs.
You chose to do Engineering, which is a male dominant profession, any particular reason?
I was good in Mathematics. From my childhood I wanted to be an Engineer, so I chose the Mathematics stream for my ALs and I was lucky to enter University of Moratuwa to do a degree in Chemical Engineering. If I set my mind to some thing I will somehow do it. That is my hallmark. Whatever the challenges that may come my way, I will overcome those to reach my goal. Unfortunately, during the period that I was in the university we got caught to the civil unrest in the country and the campuses were more closed than open, we lost a lot of our youthful years due to strikes in the universities. So, in my third year I decided to get a transfer to a UK university to complete my degree. My fiancé, my husband now, was doing his PhD in Cambridge University at that time. So, we got married and moved to UK where I completed my MSc in Food Process Engineering from University of Reading. I did well in my MSc with a distinction. After my postgraduate studies were completed we both returned to Sri Lanka. I joined Unilever as a Management Trainee in 1995 and gained lot of exposure in different areas especially in R&D, quality assurance and supply chain and also in an expatriate posting in Unilever Regional Innovation Centre in Bangalore. Two years later, I returned to Sri Lanka and was offered a role in supply chain. I considered this as the turning point in my life. Although that was not my specialization, I worked really hard and worked my way up and got promoted to the Board as Customer Service Director in 2009. I was responsible for supply chain and was the first female supply chain director to be appointed
to Unilever in the whole of South Asia, it was a proud moment indeed for me.
Currently you are the Chairperson of CILT, tell us about CILT and your role there.
I was elected as the Chairperson at the AGM this March as the 21st Chairperson of CILT. I joined CILT in 2011 as a Chartered member. I feel proud of my achievement within a short period as I was elected as the second female Chair of CILT after 27 years to this position. The role is very challenging as the expectations are very high among the membership and corporate partners. I feel that I have both the passion & the commitment to take CILT to a different level. My passion is to develop capable professionals for the industry. CILT’s main objective is to promote the art and science of logistics and transport. We are the only chartered professional body in the country for professionals engaged in transport, logistics and supply chain. CILT is present in 34 countries with a membership of over 34,000 with headquarters in the UK. CILT will be celebrating 100 years in 2019. We cater to professionals engaged in passenger and freight movement including infrastructure development in land transport, aviation, maritime, supply chain and logistics. We conduct educational programs, accredit education institutes, mentor young professionals, policy advocacy etc., to promote women representation and young professionals, WiLAT and Young Professionals Forum (YPF) under CILT have been formed. My role is to provide leadership and be accountable to drive this agenda of the institute. CILT has a dynamic and a supportive council consisting of senior industry leaders, academia and officers from the public sector who are all volunteers committed to support the professionalism in the industry.
What were the key challenges that you had to overcome when you entered this industry?
I studied engineering knowing these challenges and after I moved to supply chain the same situation prevailed. But personally, I was not deterred by these challenges. From our childhood my parents treated all three of us alike, and instilled confidence in us irrespective of our gender. I was always inspired by the hard working and gregarious qualities of my parents who always taught us to work hard and never give up no matter what. But life was not rosy, as a young female manager, I had to face some challenging situations where some of my colleagues who are older and more experienced than me at the beginning were not happy to work for a female boss. But I must say that was short lived, once they got to know me better they aligned with me. I am a highly people-oriented person, so I have the ability to connect with people at any level without any power distance. I moved to supply chain by chance at Unilever, so I had to learn this profession from scratch as I did not have a background in it. I worked long hours learning the ABCs of the profession by working closely with the operational teams and I was able to get the overall exposure within a short period of time. My people-oriented skills coupled with my passion to learn new things really helped me to overcome the challenges and develop a close bond with the teams.
In Sri Lanka, the female labour force participation (FLFP) is only 36%, which is very low when compared to the world average, what can we do to make these women enter the job market or develop entrepreneurs and contribute to the economy?
FLFP is a game changer with the potential to transform our economy and our society. The Government wants to increase the FLFP to 40% by 2020 and a taskforce was set up under NHRDC to identify intervention to achieve this objective. I was part of this task force. The task force identified five strategic areas in which interventions are required to achieve this objective. National policy and labour reforms, HR policy interventions in the public and private sectors, incentivizing the private sector to hire more females, social sensitization and education reforms. Logistics and transport are seen as female unfriendly and male dominant industry. The industry has a huge imbalance and less than 3% females work in the sector. I find this intriguing when more females are qualifying to enter universities now than before and the female pass rate is much higher than males. One reason for this is due to lack of awareness of career opportunities. So, we want to encourage them to chose L&T careers at a young age so that they will realize that the potential is enormous. So, providing career guidance to attract more young professionals to this ever-growing industry by grooming them and developing capability through mentoring and continuing professional development (CPD) programs is one of our main priorities at CILT.
The Sri Lankan economy is driven by women, but that is mostly at the lower end of the job pyramid. As someone who has broken the glass ceiling in your industry, why aren’t we seeing more women at the top? How can we retain more women and support them to ascend to leadership positions?
Yes, our economy is mainly driven by the women working in the middle east, apparel and tea industries. That is at the lower levels. Despite more women getting educated and entering universities and graduating, we have very few women entering the world of work. I think before we shatter the glass ceiling we need to tackle the sticky floor, ie. to understand why they do not enter the world of work. As discussed, you need to address the structural issues to make the environment more conducive for women to enter the world of work. For example, childcare facilities in the workplace, flexible working hours, improved public transport, etc.,
We also need to mentor the young women on likely career opportunities and groom them to face the work environment. Also, you need to get the support from the male counterparts. We need to have strong male advocates to support this agenda. We have so much conscious and unconscious biases in the work place, which creates an entry barrier for women. We launched “Ignite”- mentoring program, which we initiated in 2014 to groom young females to face industry challenges. I am happy to say that we got an overwhelming response from very senior ladies in the industry to mentor these young females. We are grateful for that and so far, we have mentored 150 through “Ignite”. Also, WiLAT partnered with UNWomen on HeforShe and Women Empowerment Principles (WEP) to recognize companies and CEOs, male advocates who are championing this cause. We are encouraged by the progress we have made so far. I would like to urge all successful women leaders who have reached the pinnacle of their careers to support another, this will help us to develop a continuous pipeline of young talent to enter the industry and work their way to leadership positions. Let’s be a woman who lifts the sprit of another.
What is your opinion about the current logistics and transport industry & its future?
Logistics and transport are key drivers of economic growth. We have built infrastructure ahead of the future by building ports and airports in Hambantota and in Mattala. This is needed to grow our economy, but we need to have a proper plan to make use of these infrastructure facilities to drive growth. Sri Lanka is strategically positioned in one of the busiest east west maritime routes, which is now part of China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative. We cannot only boast about the location advantage. We need to have enabled policies, processes, and facilities to make Sri Lanka a logistics hub. In the recently published World Bank’s 2018 Logistics Performance Indicator (LPI) ranking, Sri Lanka is placed at 94 out of 180. In 2014, the ranking was 89th. LPI ranking gives an indication about the logistics friendliness of a country. This will hamper our competitiveness in international trade. LPI analyses logistics performance under six areas; efficiency of customs and border clearance, quality of trade and transport infrastructure, ease of arranging competitively priced shipments, the competence and quality of logistics service, the ability to track and trace and timeliness of shipments. As logistics professionals it’s important to work together to improve this ranking and the perception about logistics friendliness of our country. The shipping industry is continually changing and adapting to meet the needs of the commercial marketplace, so that it can become more competitive and cost-effective. Improvements in ship technology, structure and materials will lead to even bigger megaships, particularly within the container shipping industry. Sri Lanka has the advantage of having the only deep draft port terminal in South Asia and will certainly have the edge to cater to these megaships. But our capacity is already running out so the operationalization of the East container terminal is a top priority.
Public transport is a big issue in the country. We experience huge congestion on our roads, road designs are suboptimal and road safety is a big cause for concern, road accidents are increasing day by day. Government has plans to introduce Light Rail Transit (LRT) system by 2024, but until then bus modernization and service quality improvement is a must. As per Mayor of Bogota, “A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars, but where the rich use public transportation”. So, we have to invest in public transport if we are to shift people from cars to buses and ease congestion on roads. We need to use digitalization in transport and logistics in line with the changes that are happening around the world. Already Ministry of Transport has taken steps to enable rail and bus ticket reservation online and digital card and e motoring will be a reality soon.
Words of inspiration to women joining industry or entrepreneurs?
Women are playing leading roles in the society. Being a woman should not ever be considered as a barrier for our progress. We are unique, we have our innate capabilities that differentiate us. Make your choices early and instill confidence in your self to achieve your goals in life with passion and commitment. Start by doing what is necessary, then do what is possible and suddenly you are doing the impossible.