Asanga Abeyagoonasekera


Asanga Abeyagoonasekera is a political columnist and author. He is a visiting professor for geopolitics and global leadership at Northern Kentucky University and a visiting lecturer in International Political Economy for University of London in Sri Lanka Royal Institute of Colombo and teach International Security at University of Colombo. Asanga has more than a decade of experience in Government Administration, serving as the head of several Government Institutions to positions at the board level. Asanga writes the monthly column Dateline Colombo for IPCS think tank in New Delhi.
Asanga is the Director General of the Institute of National Security Studies Sri Lanka.
He is the former Executive Director of the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute of International Relations and Strategic Studies which is a Sri Lankan government think tank.

Early life and education

Asanga is the only son of Ossie Abeygunasekera, who was the leader of Sri Lanka Mahajana Pakshaya, presidential candidate and Member of Parliament from Colombo District. Ossie Abeygunasekera was assassinated by a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam suicide attack in 1994.
His primary and secondary education was at S. Thomas' Preparatory School and Ananda College, he gained BSc in Computer Science and a MBA from the Edith Cowan University. He has studied at the Harvard Kennedy School, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, India School of Business, Oxford University and Yale University. He attended Harvard Kennedy School under US-SouthAsia leadership program to study counter terrorism.
He is an alumnus of the National Defence University Washington, APCSS Hawaii and US State Department IVLP

Career

Having worked in the Sri Lankan telecommunication sector as a project manager at Sri Lanka Telecom and Hutchison Lanka from 2001-2005, Asanga joined the government sector in 2005 and was appointed Chairman of the Ceylon Fishery Harbours Corporation following the Asian tsunami in 2004 which destroyed many fishery harbours. He held the post until 2010 after successful reconstruction of the fishery harbours and transforming the loss making cooperation into profit, He was appointed Chairman of the Sri Lanka Foreign Employment Agency in 2010 and served until 2011, when he was appointed as Executive Director of the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute for International Relations and Strategic Studies the Government foreign policy think tank under Ministry of External Affairs. Asanga was also on the Board of Directors of the Sri Lanka Ports Authority from 2005 to 2010. On 10 April 2015, he was appointed as a Board Director at the Insurance Board of Sri Lanka by Minister of Finance Ravi Karunanayake. Asanga served as a consultant to Minister of Finance until May 2016.
In 2012, Asanga was selected as a Young Global Leader by World Economic Forum.
Asanga is the founding curator of the Global Shapers Colombo Hub and the Global Dignity Country Chair for Sri Lanka.
In 2012 Asanga established "Dirisaviya Foundation" a non governmental not for profit foundation which operates several initiatives including ipaidabribe.lk, a powerful global crowdsourced anticorruption website, the project Global Dignity for School Children, and the Millennium Project Foresight initiative of Sri Lanka,. Dirisaviya Foundation also launched two mobile apps, Sri Dalada and Sinhala Poets. The foundation conducted the memorial lecture of the national hero Ven.S.Mahinda Thero.

Books

In 2015 Asanga published the book Towards a Better World Order.
In 2016 he authored a chapter for The Modi Doctrine: New Paradigms in India’s Foreign Policy and also wrote
the children's book The Sacred Tooth Relic of Sri Lanka.
His latest book is Sri Lanka at Crossroads: Geopolitical challenges and National Interests. The book was praised by former national security advisor of India Shivshankar Menon, former foreign Minister Singapore George Yeo, and many other academics from around the world. In the book, Asanga revisits Halford Mackinder's geopolitical theories while highlighting the geostrategic importance of Sri Lanka.