Ceylon Tobacco gets first female MD/CEO

Monisha Abraham has been appointed as the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Ceylon Tobacco Company PLC (CTC) effective 1 December.

Prior to joining CTC, Monisha served as the Managing Director of Ibecor, an operating company fully owned by Heineken International. Monisha takes over from Nedal Salem who served as CTC’s MD and CEO since May 2019.

During a career spanning over 16 years with Heineken, she has held various senior management roles across five countries. Monisha joined Heineken Dubai in 2005, as Trade Marketing Manager and in less than two years, was appointed Marketing Manager for the Gulf region.

In 2009, she moved to the Netherlands as the Regional Marketing Director for the Africa-Middle East region and later served as the Managing Director for Almaza in Lebanon from 2014 to 2017. She then moved to Heineken Hanoi as its Managing Director from 2017 to 2019, leading the northern area of Vietnam. During this time Monisha was instrumental in leading the integration of the northern and southern operating entities, while ensuring the smooth integration of people and processes.

In 2019, Monisha moved to Brussels, Belgium where she took over as Managing Director of Ibecor, a 100% Heineken-owned company specialising in inbound logistics and transportation for Africa Middle East. At Ibecor she was responsible for transforming the organisation by expanding its services to Asia Pacific and the Caribbean.

Having started her career in 1995, in Abu Dhabi with a beer/spirits and wine distributor, Monisha has gained broad and extensive experience across the FMCG sector. Over the years she has built a reputation as a leader who drives robust business strategies while developing people and fostering high performing teams. She has continuously worked towards building networks to facilitate collaboration across the company as well as externally to drive business priorities, delivering sustainable growth in volumes and profits. Monisha holds a Bachelor’s Degree and an MBA from India.

While welcoming Monisha on board, the company also extended its gratitude to outgoing MD and CEO Nedal Salem for his astute leadership which saw CTC through challenging times and the management and employees of CTC wished him all the very best as he takes on the next role as the Managing Director of British American Tobacco Malaysia and Singapore.