Dr. Gunathilake Tantirigama (Dr.GT) has been appointed as the new Chairman of the National Institute of Business Management (NIBM).
Dr. Tantirigama brings with him a wealth of experience to the NIBM in an array of multifaceted roles such as principal economist, senior analyst and economic statistician. He had been a Dean, Head of Department, post-graduate director and the director of Institute providing leadership to faculties, departments and post graduate programs in local and overseas universities.
His employment career as an academic and a consultant spans over five decades in that he has worked as a Principal Economist at the Ministry of Transport, New Zealand, Senior Economic Statistician at the Statistics New Zealand, senior consultant in charge of PhD management programs at the Faculty of Management Studies at Rajarata University.
He was the pioneering Dean of the School of Business at the National School of Business Management (NSBM) and a lecturer in economics at Lincoln University, New Zealand. He had the distinction of being the pioneering program Director in charge of M.Sc Management and MBA programs of the Faculty of Management Studies and Commerce of the University of Sri Jayewardenepura.
A contribution rendered by him to research academic literature was that he had authored well over twenty-five research publications. Dr. GT has authored and published several textbooks in the field of economics that are extensively being used by the university students for their graduate and postgraduate programs.
His consultancy profile is also equally impressive in that he had undertaken more than ten consultancies both locally and internationally. Prominent among them were the consultancy services he offered to New Zealand based leadership training academy called New Horizons Education Training and Research Institute, service offered as the subject matter expert to compile Tourism Satellite Account pilot project at the Ministry of Tourism, Fiji jointly funded by Fiji Government and New Zealand Agency for International Development (NZAID).
He earned his PhD in Economics from the University of Delhi, India in 2001.
