The Coach
Meet Chamara De Silva
“Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence”. Chamara De Silva is a one-of-a-kind experienced character who has played diverse roles in his professional life.
Chamara is a versatile professional with an absolute hunger for perfection and clarity of work and innovation. He is a role model for the youth.
He is a Chartered Management Accountant (ACMA) UK and an authentic, Gallup.Inc (ICF Approved) Certified Coach. His dynamism in leadership has made him serve in the organization successfully throughout.
Chamara possesses 20 years of experience in the Operations, Manufacturing and Finance arenas. During this period, he held the positions of Factory Manager, General Manager, Senior General Manager and Chief Operating Officer. He has also, held the position, Head of Lean when he was the Senior General Manager in Hirdaramani Group of companies.
Chamara anchored his team to win many accolades for the Factory. He is an individual who always keeps a close eye on sustainability too.
He has got NIKE LEAN1.0 (Lean Manufacturing) and LEAN 2.0 (Lean Leadership) certifications under his belt. He applied the learnings to all processes, trained and coached the teams to sustain the systems implemented by continually improving while achieving the set goals creating a healthy work environment.
Leadership is about empathy. It is about having the ability to relate to and connect with people for the purpose of inspiring and empowering their lives. Chamara is an empathetic leader.
He was promoted to the designation of Chief Operating Officer where he overlooked 4 factories and the degree of accuracy in his delivery was flawless.
True leaders don’t create followers. They create more leaders. He conducted internal training programs (Leadership, Lean) for all levels of the management. Groomed the second level where all replacements were within the facility.
Now, it’s time for him to share his knowledge and experience among the next genesis to become leaders as him. Chamara is a resource person at the National Productivity Center and the Sri Lanka Institute of Textile and Apparel. (SLITA)
During his tenure as the Factory Manager of Hirdaramani Industries Limited Seethawaka from 1999 to 2003, Chamara established the state-of-the-art Hirdaramani Industrial Washing Plant in Seethawaka and created the entire set of processes and built a network of customers generating more business opportunities due to the in-house value-added operations. Chamara has a knack of initiating novel concepts and drives himself to implement them. As the Factory Manager of CKT Apparel Wathuregama from 2003 to 2009, he was able to achieve the feat of making the apparel manufacturing facility, the most highly efficient, low cost manufacturing facility.
In his journey to the top of the career ladder, he was appointed the General Manager of CKT Apparel (Pvt.) Ltd from 2009 to 2018. Under his administration as the General Manager, Chamara anchored his team to win many accolades for the Factory. He is an individual who always keeps a close eye on sustainability too. These achievements bear testimony to it.
CKT Apparel (Pvt.) Ltd is the 1st purpose-built LEED Gold Apparel factory in the world. It was also awarded the 1st Carbon Neutral apparel facility in Asia in 2015.
CKT Apparel has cemented its position in the industry by attaining laurels such as
• National Energy Efficiency Gold Award in 2010
• National Green Award (Silver) in 2014
• National Productivity Award for Large Scale Manufacturers in 2012
• Jastica Taiki Akimoto 5S Award in 2013
• He obtained the Fair-Trade USA Certification
• National Green Award (Gold) in 2014, World Textile Award Textile Institute UK – Garment Maker of the Year in 2014
• National Occupational Health Excellence Award in 2016.
Leadership is about empathy. It is about having the ability to relate to and connect with people for the purpose of inspiring and empowering their lives. Chamara is an empathetic leader, he showcased it by establishing the Day Care Facility for the employees’ children including the nursery in affiliation with Patagonia (USA) for the first time in the world. Developed a team of Managers for overseas operations in the same group. He brought prestige to the country by representing Sri Lanka in the Copenhagen Fashion Summit.
Have You Discovered Your True North?
True North will deliver coaching (Strength Based Coaching - Gallup USA) in areas such as Life Coaching and Performance Coaching by recognizing the innate talents and thereby converting strengths to have consistent performance in to managing weaknesses. Process Excellence and Leadership Development Training will take forefront in True North’s path to success. The Coaching will be focused on Organizations, Institutes and Individuals of the Senior Management, Middle Management and Executives.