The Stax Academy, an initiative by Stax LLC, a global strategy consulting firm that specializes in delivering actionable, data-driven insights, recently conducted its graduation ceremony for the students of its first course in Colombo. The Academy was established as a platform to upskill future business leaders to take on the challenges of the global economy. The class consisted of 30 students representing various universities across Sri Lanka who successfully completed the four-month certification program.

In his address at the graduation ceremony, Dr. Kumudu Gunasekara, Managing Director, Stax, said, “Due to the current economic condition in Sri Lanka, lots of youth are seeking foreign employment opportunities and leaving our shores. As corporates, I believe that we can support our youth by providing these opportunities within the country so that they have the same overseas experience right here at home.” He also spoke about the importance of being dreamers and not followers. And the importance of dreaming big to achieve individual goals. “Age is not a barrier to achieving your dreams. This is a critical notion to break in Sri Lanka,” he added.

Adding his thoughts, Ruwindhu Peiris, Managing Director, Stax, said, “It is important that our new talent enter the workforce, ‘corporate prepared’ and ‘global ready’. The Stax Academy introduces young talent to modern skill sets demanded by the evolving corporate world. It nurtures and cultivates essential competencies to develop and transform them to be Sri Lanka’s future corporate leaders.”

Kethaka Weerasuriya, a graduate of Edith Cowan University (ECU) Sri Lanka noted that being able to embrace challenges makes you a competitive job candidate in any field. “Teamwork put us outside our comfort zone, and we realized that surrounding ourselves with the best people can help us achieve great things in life.” A student from the National School of Business Management (NSBM), Kavinda Hasaranga who joined the certification program spoke about how they learned many things that they didn’t know about the corporate world and how much they loved the work culture at Stax.

“Through data analytics we learned advanced Excel, and about web creating tools, social media analytics, work cloud, and so on. Even though data analytics was for our skill development, I have been using them for budgeting my personal expenses.” stated Omar Zaneefer, a graduate from the Royal Institute of Colombo (RIC).

A panel discussion was also held in parallel to the graduation ceremony and the panelists included Stax Managing Directors, Dr. Kumudu Gunasekara and Mr. Ruwindhu Peiris; Edith Cowan University (ECU) Sri Lanka Program Convenor/Lecturer, Dr. Anushka Siriwardana; RIC Chief Coordinator, Corporate, Alumni and Student Engagement, Ms. Sharmain Abeykoon; and NSBM Lecturer, Ms. Vageesha Rajapaksa.

The Stax Academy program offers a combination of micro-learnings across specific functional and professional skill pillars needed to establish a successful career in Management Consulting as well as in general industries. The program focuses on delivering practical learning experiences through exposing candidates to different types of workstreams and projects to uncover their strengths and explore their aspirations. The course is centered on the principles of Ikigai with the objective of enabling candidates to explore workstreams that are value-focused, fulfilling, and purposeful.

About Stax

Stax is a global M&A strategy consulting firm headquartered in Boston, USA with offices around the US, Asia, and London. Established 17 years ago, today the Asia office, based in Colombo, Sri Lanka supports its global Private Equity clients. Over the years, Stax has been advising 15 of the Top 20 global Private Equity investors and 25+ Fortune 500 companies. Since its inception, Stax has delivered over 2,500+ client engagements, across diverse industries covering 40+ international markets―Stax LLC inspires organizations to dream big, think outside the box, and complement gut-based decisions with fact-based research. Visit www.stax.com to find out more.