September 15, 2025
United Board Trustee Shiranee Mills’s Journey in Education and Music
As a trustee of the United Board based in Sri Lanka, Ms. Shiranee Mills brings to her service a lifelong passion for both education and music—two strands woven together throughout her personal and professional journey.
Growing up in a pastor’s family in the northern region of Sri Lanka, Ms. Mills was surrounded by the rhythms of faith, service, and song. Her father’s pastoral work took the family to different congregations across the region, while her mother, hailing from a musical background, enriched church life through her singing and her leadership of the choir. “I grew up in a home where music was a natural part of life,” Ms. Mills recalls. “My school, founded by missionaries, also placed great emphasis on singing. Education and music have always gone hand in hand for me.”
Kamala Sugunarajah, Shiranee’s mother, standing behind the pianist (third from right)
This formative experience inspired Ms. Mills to integrate the arts into her professional life as a teacher and later as a school principal. In a context where academic success is often measured solely through classroom performance and tuition classes, she worked to broaden her students’ horizons. “I was able to break the norm in my school,” she says, “and encouraged children to involve themselves in co-curricular activities, especially choir.” Under her leadership, morning worship and assemblies resounded with song, and students from diverse religious backgrounds found joy in making music together.
For Ms. Mills, music is never an extracurricular afterthought—it is what Sri Lanka needs after years of conflicts when children grew up in warring communities with feelings of hatred, bitterness, sadness, hopelessness and loss. Music has the power to intervene and take on the role of a healer. In places where she taught she had found that children were able to overcome bitter feelings and forget the sadness of war through being involved in music.
Music is also a tool for shaping confident, adaptable, and collaborative young people, as she has observed that the students who engaged in music, drama, and other aesthetic subjects often excelled in their careers. “They adjusted more easily to work environments, worked well in teams, and progressed with confidence—skills they began developing through the arts.”
Her commitment to the transformative power of education has taken Ms. Mills beyond the school setting. She currently heads the Women’s Education and Research Centre (WERC) in Colombo, where she continues to focus on leadership development, gender equality, and justice—values that resonate closely with the United Board’s mission—particularly for women survivors of violence. “We have built networks among women leaders to strengthen their voices in seeking their rights and access to resources. We have also helped build leadership skills among women and encourage them to take up leadership positions in their local communities.”
Her professional journey has also included roles with international development organizations such as the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), both of which operate on principles of gender equality, justice, and non-discrimination. “My experiences with CIDA and ADB not only help me understand the United Board’s programs better,” she notes, “but also enable me to contribute meaningfully as a gender specialist and an educator.”
Just as in her early days when voices joined together in harmony, a constant refrain in her life and career has been to help people—especially educators and students—find their own voice, work together, and flourish through music. “Musical education widens horizons, builds empathy, understanding and sensitivity, and serves as a therapeutic tool that is instrumental in healing anger, pain, hurt and trauma,” she says. “Music is fun, expressive, sensitive and has a place in all educational settings.”
With daughter Oenone in Thailand, June 2025