Anoka Abeyrathne – Sri Lankan Business Woman

As the director and co-founder of Sustainable Solutions, Anoka Abeyrathne is a policy advocate and eco-social entrepreneur with a passion for sustainable urban development. Her social enterprise focuses on solving social and environmental problems using community participation. In fact, the organization operates in more than 5,000 villages in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and the Maldives with around 20,000 volunteers.

Abeyrathne is the very first Sri Lankan Representative to be on the UN-Habitat’s Youth Advisory Board, as well as a Global Youth Ambassador for the UN Special Envoy on Global Education. To top that off, she is also the first Sri Lankan woman to be named the “New Champion” by the World Economic Forum and was the youngest person to get the Commonwealth Youth Award in Development. Back in 2012, she was featured on the Huffington Post and Youth Service America list of the 25 most influential and powerful young persons of the World.

In 2016, Anoka Abeyrathne was named one of the most influential people, as part of the “Class of 2016,” by Asia 21. She stated that “leadership is being able to influence, inspire and empower others to work towards a vision together to contribute towards the greater good of society.”

The feminine name Anoka is derived from two words from native American languages. The word Anokatanhan is taken from the Native Dakota and means “on both sides” or “from both sides”. While the native Ojibwa word Onokay means “working waters”. The name is not common and there are barely any notable people with the name Anoka.