Mrs Shivapiriya Vilvaratnam has bagged Exemplary Women Leadership Award

Mrs Shivapiriya Vilvaratnam has bagged Exemplary Women Leadership Award

• February 18, 2022

Mrs Shivapiriya Vilvaratnam has bagged the Exemplary Women Leadership Award on a global level by Women Icon powered by Times Women. It is a majestic recognition for her leadership traits and dynamic stature.

Mrs Shivapiriya Vilvaratnam always orchestrates her exceptional and extraordinary talents to achieve tasks and assignments with a high sense of dedication and responsibilities, giving due priorities to maintain the sustainability and perfection to meet the needs of families or organizations. She inherits the dominance of operational and strategic approach which is one of the contributory segments for the constructive accomplishments for all her good works and very much beneficial to mankind.

Mrs Shivapiriya Vilvaratnam is a class I officer belongs to the premier service of the island, Sri Lanka Administrative Service and presently working as a Divisional Secretary at Divisional Secretariat, Manmunai South Eruvilpattu since 16.08.2017, and she controls and manages a workforce comprising 400 employees. She maintains very good rapport with the officers and general public. As a head of the institution, she manages throughout the office to make productivity and develop mechanisms for effective service delivery. She leads her organization towards empowering human life through innovative and transparent resource management.   

Mrs Shivapiriya is an enthusiastic, efficient and competent administrative higher officer with 14 years of pragmatic experience in administrative field undertakes various tasks such as social welfare, state land management, rural development, cultural, youth and sports activities, women, child, elders and special need peoples’ empowerment and safety including planning and development of social and infrastructure at divisional and provincial level. She is interested as a team player dedicated to helping employees to improve their skills and techniques on personal, institutional, social and environmental goals. She performs as a visionary leader, with honesty and integrity and she strengthens herself as a strong woman leader. 

She has previous working experiences as a Provincial Director of Cultural Affairs, Deputy Provincial Director (admin) of Health and Assistant Divisional Secretary. As an administrator, Mrs Shivapiriya Vilvaratnam enjoys learning new skills, new technologies and adapts in various working conditions including a multi - grouping and multi – ethnic workforce with minimal supervision or team environment. Her experiences in various organizations supporting executive administration lends strong leadership abilities to qualifications. She is an extensive professional with superior communication skills in both written and spoken forms. 

Mrs Shivapiriya is extremely interested on environmental conservation and management activities. Environment policy has been adapted to her organization and established a green committee in the name of ‘ECO LOVE’ with the theme of ‘dreaming for clean and green region’. Her superior and proper guidance to the team staff and young generation of community helps to travel in a sustainable path. She introduces an innovative special forestation idea called “Miyowakiya” in the division for the first time in Sri Lanka and three forestation sites were established under her supervision. She not only focuses on tree planting but also considered many strategies such as waste management, energy saving, water saving, polythene free environment, sustainable management of trees, protection of water bodies and compost making. Her guidance supports to plant more than 11000 trees during her period in present station. 

She always keeps an eye on social welfare activities by way of empowering the vulnerable society. The service during the resettlement period soon after the conflict in Manmunai West Division was outstanding. Annual blood donation campaigns organized by her at mass level and more than 100 blood donors supported through the campaign yearly. Her involvement on Covid 19 pandemic management activities are exemplary and carried out through a proper covid management plan including inspection of quarantined families, ensuring food security of people and vaccination. Divisional administration is the vital role of Divisional Secretary and she has engaged in different dimensions of public services. As a Divisional Secretary she has coordinated many activities and services of several fields in a supportive manner. Her directives towards the staff helps to accomplish the tasks in a quick and efficient way. Economy of the poor farming community of her division is protected by several means during severe pandemic situations. She made the community aware of several benefits and policies of the government and she ensured that the vulnerable society obtained those privileges. She has implemented the social security pension scheme strategically and has been appreciated for the highest achievements at national level. 

She finds special strategies within the organization to make change and create a productive organization and provide efficient services to the public. Strategize organizational, social and environmental success of the organization through continual development and improvement. She is always thinking out of the box and motivates her employees in a similar way.

She established teams such as Divisional Productivity team, Green Committee, welfare team, complaint management team and disaster management committee to improve service delivery to the public. She is very innovative in event management and events are critically planned and organized in an effective way with reporting. Mrs. Shivapiriya was a pioneer in holding Sinhala Tamil Provincial Cultural festivals under her esteem and challenging leadership respectively in 2015, 2016 and 2017. And also she conducted divisional sports festivals, National Days, International days and traditional events such as ‘Kompumuri’ activity which depicts one of the primitive and ancient sportive activities of the Tamil community. She organized a number of environmental related programs, launching souvenirs, newsletters and magazines related to public benefits are exemplary and cherished by her superiors too. 

She plays a vital role in human resource management and she provides training to cater the current demands, necessities and needs of the officers in terms of the scopes and guidelines of the training objectives. Officers are appreciated for their special skills, for the services beyond their duties and for efficiency as a motivation which also in turn support for effective service delivery. 

Strategies such as team building, officers’ appreciation, proper documentation, complaint management mechanism, empower secondary leadership and several other related perceptions developed by her which supports to enhance the productivity and efficiency of officers to deliver service to the community which leads to achieve awards in subsequent years. She is much concerned about integrity and declared her office as Anti - bribery and anti-corrupted office to the public and strictly supervise and adhere to it.

Mrs Shivapiriya has obtained her first degree in B. Sc (Honors) in Agriculture at Eastern University, Sri Lanka with First class. She had her Diploma in Public Administration at Sri Lanka Institution of Development Administration (SLIDA) and completed her Master Degree in Development Economics at Eastern University, Sri Lanka. She has also obtained her Bachelor of Laws degree at Open University of Sri Lanka in 2022. She has research experiences and presented papers in many research proceedings and sessions. 

She possesses excellent leadership skills and nurtured an ideal team building spirit and ability. She has all the potentialities and capabilities to be proactive in resolving any issues in a very amicable way. She has a well versed executive and administrative experience. Shivapiriya is a versatile speaker who hails a peculiar trait to express ideas and thoughts to get the general acceptance of the audience wherever she presents her views. She enjoys reading and writing.

Her performance and leadership qualities help to achieve several awards in national and provincial level for individuals and her organization. The National Productivity Awards for two successive times proved her exemplary leadership qualities. Receiving an award of National level First Place in 2020 for inclusion of the highest number of beneficiaries under the Social Security Board pension scheme is a remarkable achievement and exhibits her vast interest in society receiving benefits. Her organization achieved first place Organic Agriculture Competition at District level. 

Mrs Shivapiriya was born in a customary village called Kallady Uppodai in Batticaloa district on 09^th of June 1980 and she was educated at Vivekananda Girls’ Maha Vidyalaya and Shivananda National School which is one of the prestigious schools in the district. She was generated for aiming at excellence and her childhood life was greatly influenced and inspired her personality with the blessing of a wonderful atmosphere which has had the tomb of the most respected Swami Vipulanandar and existence of the highly reputed religious institutions like Ramakrishna mission. She always gets the wholehearted support both from her parents and her husband. She is a mother of three daughters and she is very keen on Work - Life balance.  Shivapiriya has faced many challenges during her career but she enjoys all challenges bravely and makes them successful.   

Shivapiriya feels that her experience in the administrative field offers extensive expertise to draw on and she really feels lucky to be able to give back to her community in many ways. She is an inspiration for the younger generation and gives equal importance to having a vision and ability to convey that vision to her employees and get them excited about it, helping them stay motivated and engaged on which they are working. As a competent higher officer Shivapiriya is leading by example and sets standards of excellence with strong ethical values and practices which helps the team to reach the potential. 

Thank you to the Women Icon for recognizing majestic services and selecting Mrs Shivapiriya Vilvaratnam as an award winner under the category of No. 1 Women Leadership Excellence Awards.