A highly skilled academic who recently added author to her growing list of credentials with the recent launch of her two books on the subject of commerce, Nadeesha Nandesena is changing the way the education system sees the importance of the commerce subject.

An old girl of Museus College, Nadeesha hails from a family with an extensive business background, something she credits for her easy understanding and love of the commerce subject. After graduation, she enrolled and completed a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Delhi, where as she explains is where she was first inspired to become a teacher.

“While I was studying in Delhi, I noticed that a lot of the lecturers were women, smart beautiful women, and I guess I wanted to be just like them. Once I completed my degree I returned to Sri Lanka and attained a teaching position at Museus College.”

Teaching the London A/Level standard to students, she excelled as a teacher with most of her students who followed business studies achieving high marks at the Edexcel exams. Thereafter she decided to follow a post graduate degree and traveled to London, where she earned a post graduate diploma in business management studies, followed by a masters degree for business administrations from University of Bolton.

With only basic experience in lecturing, she returned and immediately took up a short post at Lyceum International, followed by a term at the British School of Commerce. Since then, she has added several positions from visiting lecture, university course coordinator, student guidance counselor and teacher trainer to her credentials.

With such a hectic daily schedule to work around, it's hard to believe she was able to find time to write two books as well but as Nadeesha explains, the key to her success is simply good organization; stating that while she gives preference to her lectures, she always prepares a day ahead for all her classes.

Now before you assume she spends all her time reading texts books, think again, she also oversees her own saree shop ‘Stylo Collection’. With a flair for fashion, she travels to India and hand picks each saree for the shop and has personally trained her staff to run the store efficiently. She also enjoys Latin dance, gardening, cooking, observing wildlife, boating and ribbon embroidery.

The motivation behind the two books came when she was working at Lyceum International and was given the opportunity to teach the middle school classes, Nadeesha immediately noticed the limited reading options available when it came to the commerce subject and felt she should do something to help..

“Commerce is such an interesting subject and I wanted to do something that would explain the beauty of it. I did a lot of research and found there was in fact a big market for a good book.  I have the skills and knowledge to write it, so after nine months of writing and finalizing during my free time, I finally finished the first book, Easy Commerce for Middle School. I have broken it down with easy to understand and interesting text, pictures, questions to practice and guidelines to help students prepare. My main aim was to make it easier for younger children to learn commerce.” She said.

“There are so many things that need to be improved to further the commerce subject. From my experience in the international schools I’ve worked at, I would say a teacher training program is needed, proper reading materials, good teaching of strategies when it comes to commerce and IT support to make the subject more effective would definitely help.”  She further added.

As Sri Lankan’s, we can all be proud of her second book, edexcel IGCSE Commerce,  as this is the first time a Sri Lankan author has written on the subject. Nadeesha is in talks with British publishing firm, PSS publishers to make edexcel IGCSE Commerce available to an international readership. Till then it will hopefully be available soon in Singapore, Japan and Bangladesh

With plans to write another book, a revision guide for the Cambridge business studies for O/level standards and ambitions to teach abroad for a short period, Nadeesha can certainly expect to be kept busy for the coming year.

By Lake Argent

Pix by Pradeep Dilrukshana