Our Board

WFA & WFAL Board of Directors | Dilani Champika Alagaratnam Goonatilleke, Sri Lanka

Dilani Alagaratnam LLB. LL.M (Sri Lanka) is an Attorney-at-law of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka.  Currently.  She also chairs the Legislation Sub-committee of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Education Forum, Sri Lanka.    She is also a director of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce-ICLP Alternate Dispute Resolution Centre.

She served in many capacities in the John Keells Group of Companies in Sri Lanka, one of the largest diversified conglomerates in Sri Lanka, since joining the Group in 1992. At the time of her retirement from John Keells Holdings PLC, the holding Company of the John Keells Group,  in December 2019, she was a member of its Group Executive Committee and had Group level responsibility for the Functions of Legal & Secretarial; Human Resources; Enterprise Risk Management; Sustainability and CSR; Group Sourcing and for the business of John Keells Office Automation.  She has also been a long-standing director of Union Assurance PLC, a large listed insurance company, and has been a director of Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka, which is responsible for implementing all ICT Projects implemented by the Government of Sri Lanka, among the many other directorates she has held. Ms Alagaratnam also held the position of Council Member of the Sri Lanka Institute of Directors and has been a long standing member of the National Labour Advisory Committee.

She has been recognized as a Career Woman Role Model by Women in Management and as one of the most powerful women in Sri Lanka by the Echelon Magazine.

WFA Board of Directors | Radhika Coomaraswamy, Member, Sri Lanka

Radhika Coomaraswamy received her BA from Yale University, her J.D. from Columbia University and her LLM from Harvard University. In Sri Lanka, she was Director of International Centre for Ethnic Studies from 1982 to 2005 and the Chairperson of the Sri Lankan Human Rights Commission from 2003 to 2006. Recently, from 2015-2018, she was a member of the Constitutional Council. Radhika Coomaraswamy was a founder member of the Asia Pacific Forum on Women Law and Development and is currently Chairperson of the South Asians for Human Rights

Internationally, Radhika Coomaraswamy served as UN Under Secretary General and as Special Representative of the Secretary General on Children and Armed Conflict from 2006 until her retirement in 2012 and the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women from 1994-2003. In 2014, the UN Secretary General asked Radhika Coomaraswamy to lead the Global Study to review the fifteen year implementation of Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. In 2017 she was appointed to the UN Fact Finding Mission on Myanmar and also appointed as a member of The Secretary General’s Board of Advisors on Mediation.

Radhika Coomaraswamy is on the global faculty of the New York University School of Law. She was privileged to be asked to deliver the Grotius Lecture of the American Association of International Law in 2013 and the Tanner Lecture of the University of Michigan in 2016 and the Eli Lauterpact lecture of the University of Cambridge in 2020.

She has also received numerous prizes, awards and honours both nationally and internationally including the international law award of the American Bar Association, the Bruno Kreisky award, the Leo Ettinger award, among others. She has received honorary doctorates from the University of Edinburgh, Amherst College, Leuven University and the City University of New York. In Sri Lanka she received the honorary title of Deshamanya in 2015. 

WFA Board of Directors | Priya Paul, India

Priya Paul, an Economics graduate from Wellesley College, USA, attended Harvard Business School and INSEAD.  Ms. Paul possesses more than three decades of rich experience in hospitality and multifarious management functions to her credit. She started her career as the Marketing Manager of The Park, New Delhi, and presently holds the position of Chairperson, Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels, Limited.

Priya Paul serves on the corporate boards of Apeejay Shipping Limited, Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels Limited, DLF Limited and DLF Cyber City Developments Limited. She is an Executive Committee Member of the Hotel Association of India (HAI) and also served as its President from 2005 till 2009. She is a founding member of the World Travel and Tourism Council – India Initiative and has served as the Chairperson for the year 2013. She is also a Board Member & Co-Founder of South Asia Women’s Foundation (SAWF-IN) and Board Member, Breakthrough India. She is a founder director and was Chairperson of Women’s Fund Asia (formerly South Asia Women’s Fund) from 2010 Till 2018. She serves on a multitude of arts and philanthropic advisory boards. 

In 2012, Priya Paul was awarded the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian honour, for her services to Trade & Industry by the President of India. She has also been conferred with the Insignia of Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Merite (National Order of Merit) in 2014 for her significant contributions.

WFA Board of Directors | Kristi Huynh, Sri Lanka

Kristi Huynh is currently the Managing Director of Cathects and has a decade of experience working in global markets across the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific. Through her tenure, Kristi has assembled cross functional teams and companies together to collaborate on various private sector and national infrastructure projects. As a digital aficionado, Kristi helps organizations modernize their IT infrastructure and understand the digital landscape of the next decade. Kristi has previously served on the Boards of Peak4Poverty and VivCorp Group of Companies. 

WFA Board of Directors | Mary Jane Real, Philippines

Mary Jane N. Real is a founding Co-Lead of Urgent Action Fund for Women’s Human Rights Asia and Pacific (UAF A&P). She was in charge of Programmes and Innovation and co-led the setting up of the organisation in 2017. A lawyer by profession, she is a long-time advocate of women’s human rights and gender equality having worked in various capacities with women’s rights and human rights organisations nationally, regionally and internationally.

WFA Board of Directors | Joyce Theresa Sunita Vasudevan, Malaysia

Joyce is Co-founder and Corporate Finance Head of Hibiscus Petroleum Berhad, Malaysia and had more than 25 years’ experience in various industries which encompass Fund Raising, Investor Relations, Media Relations, Strategy Development, Operations Planning, Finance, Corporate Finance and Business Planning. Joyce has an Economics and finance background and is a Certified Practising Accountant (CPA), Australia. She has expertise in Fund raising in equity and debt markets, managing local and international acquisitions of assets and other companies, facilitating the preparation of Business Strategy and plans, developing performance measurement systems, financial modelling, assisting in formulation of media and investor relations strategy

WFA Board of Directors | Nachale Boonyapisomparn (Hua), Thailand

Hua is a passionate trans activist and feminist who’s been working on advocacy and research projects for years. With experience as a project coordinator and assistant, she’s played a key role in building strong networks and founding successful support groups for trans and other LGBTQ+ communities. Hua was the first transgender program supervisor at Sisters, Thailand’s leading trans organization. She also helped found the Foundation of Transgender Alliance for Human Rights (TGA) and the Asia-Pacific Transgender Network (APTN)—all major wins for trans rights and visibility.

Currently, she’s leading as President of Sisters Foundation and Vice-President of the Foundation of Transgender Alliance for Human Rights (ThaiTGA), two of Thailand’s biggest trans-led organizations. In 2024, she also took on the role of Vice-Chair of the ThaiPATH Association, a group dedicated to improving healthcare for trans and gender-diverse people. ThaiPATH brings together healthcare providers and trans
advocates to push for better healthcare services and promote inclusive policies.

WFA Board of Directors | Nawalage Therese Manouri Shiromal Cooray, Sri Lanka

Shiromal Cooray (Sri Lanka): Shiromal Cooray is the Managing Director of Jetwing Travels (Pvt.) Ltd., one of the leading destination management companies in Sri Lanka. With diverse experience in a number of industries, Shiromal holds directorates in hotels, finance, investment banking, Commodity brokering, Commercial banking and Insurance. Hailing from a background in finance and management, Shiromal holds an MBA from the University of Colombo, is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants UK, and is the former Finance Director of J. Walter Thompson Ltd (Colombo) along with work experience in the UK and Hong Kong.

She is the past Chairperson of the Sri Lanka Institute of Directors (SLID), and past President of the Sri Lanka Association of Inbound Tour Operators. She serves on the boards of CAL Investments Ltd (Bangladesh) & several other Sri Lankan Companies. She is a non-executive, independent Director at Commercial Bank, Sri Lanka (the largest private sector Bank), Allianz Insurance and is a non-executive Director at Capital Alliance Holdings Ltd (an investment Bank), Ceylon Tea Brokers (a commodity brokering company) and a multiple number of Jetwing related companies

WFA Board of Directors | Niluka Gunawardena, Sri Lanka

Niluka Gunawardena (Sri Lanka): an educator, researcher and disability rights advocate based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Niluka regularly conducts community training workshops on Disability Rights using the CRPD-SDGs framework for a multitude of NGOs and DPOs. She also influences disability inclusive corporate policy by leading disability rights awareness sessions for corporations. As a researcher, she has worked on evidence-
based policy for organisations like the Human Environment Research Observatory, Equal Ground and BBC. She is a Board member of Women Enabled International and serves on the Disability Advisory Panel of HYPE Sri Lanka

WFA Board of Directors | Dr. Maliha Khan, Pakistan

Dr. Maliha Khan is the President and the Chief Executive Officer in Women Deliver. She has dedicated over thirty years to advancing gender equality, starting her career in Pakistan by advocating for girls’ and women's inclusion in male-dominated development projects. She has held leadership roles in program design, implementation, and evaluation at organizations such as Care and Oxfam, and was previously head of
programs at Malala Fund before joining Women Deliver. Committed to addressing the sector’s colonial and racist legacies, Dr. Khan strives for systemic change. She holds a PhD from the State University of New York and an MA from Quaid-i-Azam University, with a background in academia as a former Associate Professor. Her experiences reinforce her belief in the necessity of representing the most vulnerable girls and women to achieve meaningful global change.

WFAL Board of Directors | Lisa Ellen Pusey – Australia

Lisa Pusey has over 20 years’ experience leading complex gender equality initiatives, in Australia and internationally. Working for six years at the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) and International Women's Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific (IWRAW Asia Pacific), Lisa worked closely with women's rights activists and United Nations expert bodies to advance gender equality.

Lisa was adviser to Australia's Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick, and worked with her on several major projects during her five years at the Australian Human Rights Commission. She led the National Review into Discrimination in the Workplace (relating to pregnancy, parental leave, and return to work), and key sections of the review into the treatment of women in the Australian Defence Force. Prior to
this she worked in the community legal centre sector in Australia.

She currently works on a range of gender equality initiatives with the Elizabeth Broderick & Co, Champions of Change Coalition and the University of Sydney. Lisa is a member of the National Women’s Safety Alliance’s Policy and Advocacy Advisory Committee, and Monash University’s Safe and Equal @ Work Advisory Board and is a board member of Women’s Legal Services NSW in addition to her role on the board of Women’s Fund Asia Limited.

WFAL Board of Directors | Ruby Amelia Johnson - Australia

Ruby Johnson is a feminist activist, practitioner, and strategist fiercely committed to redistributing resources and power to intersectional social justice movements, in particular working alongside girls and young people. Ruby is Co-Founder and Co-Director of Closer Than You Think, an ideas studio and consultancy collective working at the intersection of activism, philanthropy, and art, having produced work on feminist co-leadership, and narrative change with garment workers. Ruby also leads the Global Resilience Fund at Purposeful, a collaborative fund resourcing girls and young feminists responding to crises. Ruby works as an Independent Consultant providing advice and accompaniment to organizations and funders on strategy, practice, and participation. She has co-written and produced work on movements and meaningful youth participation, including Funders’ Toolkit for Child and Youth Participation, Stories of Girls Resistance and Brave, Creative and Resilient: The Global State of Young Feminist Organizing. Ruby currently sits on the Board of Women Fund Asia, (Australia), is an advisor to Gender and Adolescence Global Evidence (GAGE), and is part of Comic Relief’s Strategic Investment Committee.

WFAL Board of Directors | Lay Ean Tan (Honey), Malaysia

Honey Tan obtained her LLM from the University of Warwick and is a member the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple. She practices in the area of high conflict matrimonial law. Honey also engages in public interest litigation, mainly in the areas of equality and non-discrimination. She is recognised as an expert on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Honey regularly
conducts workshops for judges, lawyers, and human rights defenders for UN Women on law, equality, and non-discrimination.