Kandiah Pathman
Country Director, Sri Lanka
Pathman has served as Literacy Director for Sri Lanka at Room to Read for over four years and stepped up as acting Country Director following Shevanthi's departure. With more than 30 years in leadership, he has managed large-scale, multi-donor programs (USD 10–500 million) in education, infrastructure, livelihoods, disaster risk reduction, protection, governance, and capacity building—working with key partners like the Ministry of Education, UN-Habitat, UNICEF, IFRC, Canadian Red Cross, and Save the Children.
At Room to Read, Pathman has been pivotal in deepening our Ministry of Education ties and establishing us as the top strategic partner. His standout contributions include launching the National Consortium for Children’s Books, crafting the national children’s book policy and fiction standards, publishing 25 new children’s titles, embedding structured reading and Room to Read methods into the national pre-service teacher training curriculum, rolling out certificate and diploma programs in Children’s Literature at the University of Moratuwa, expanding reading rooms and bag libraries across the country, kickstarting the Early Childhood Education program with the MoE, and revising the Braille teacher training curriculum while producing Braille books.
Pathman holds a Master’s in Sociology, an MSc in Industrial Chemistry, a Postgraduate Diploma in Education and Human Rights, along with fellowships in management and project management, and certification as an environmental professional. Fluent in Tamil, English, and Sinhala, he is a prolific author of 14 books spanning poetry, fiction, ethnography, and scholarly writings. Pathman is also a Sahithya Award nominee.
Pathman resides with his wife and four children, and remains passionate about reading, writing, motivational speaking, music, and uplifting marginalized communities.