Ceylinco Life Chief Digital Officer Upamalika Ratnayake was named the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the Year at the first-ever Women in IT Awards (WITA) organised by the Women in IT Association in Sri Lanka, recently.

The award was presented after an assessment of the projects and achievements of exemplary female CIOs who have demonstrated innovation, leadership and IT excellence in the past 18 months. Their achievements were judged on industry best practices, alignment with organisational goals, leadership and ROI generation.

Commenting on the honour conferred on Ratnayake, Ceylinco Life Managing Director/CEO R. Renganathan said, “Innovation in the adoption and use of IT is crucial to success in any business today. We are proud to have our chief digital officer win this award. She has been an invaluable member of our team and richly deserves this prestigious award.”

Ratnayake has headed the digital operations of Ceylinco Life for the past eight years and has served the company for a total of 18 years. She was also the company’s first CIO.

A Member of the British Computer Society (MBCS), Australian Computer Society and a Chartered IT professional, she holds several other professional qualifications in IT including CISA (ISACA) and an MSc in Computer Science (MCS) from the University of Colombo School of Computing. In 2013, Ratnayake had the distinction of being adjudged the Female ICT Leader of the Year by the South East Asia Regional Computer Confederation (SEARCC), a forum of national information technology professional societies in the Asia Pacific region. With 33 years of experience in the IT industry, she has been at the forefront of many landmark projects at Ceylinco Life. Some of them include centralising the business processes of the company, introducing the sales force to sales apps and the use of electronic devices for business operations, automating the manual underwriting process, implementing document management solutions and developing in-house systems, which provide business insight.

The Women in IT Association was formed by the Federation of IT Industries in Sri Lanka with the objective of developing and supporting women by enhancing their ICT skills.