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Business Leader in the Spotlight: Ranil Herath of Shorelight 11-18-25
00:21:21
In this episode, Ranil Herath shares insights on scaling organizations, leading through volatility, building effective teams, and the evolving role of boards in an AI driven world, while also reflecting on the principles that guide his own leadership a...
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- [00:00]
A
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Business and the Becker Private Equity Podcast. Thrilled today to get to visit with a brilliant leader who's been a growth leader, a board member, an advisor, an investor. He's got a tremendous view on transformation in business. We're visiting today with Ranil Harath and Reneil is going to talk to us about sort of what he does, his growth, vision, scaling, leadership, board advisory, and a lot more. Renell, can I ask you to take a second and introduce yourself and talk about what you do? Then I've got a whole series of questions for you to discuss growth, vision, leadership, technology, and a lot more.
- [00:45]
B
Fantastic. First off, thank you, Scott, for having me. It's a real pleasure to be having this discussion with you. My current role is that of Chief Revenue Officer at Shorelite. Showlite is a company that invests capital and our operational expertise to help US Universities diversify their revenue streams and really expand their global reach. And then beyond my day job, I serve on several boards and advisory councils, including Building the Future of Workforce Health Initiative at Harvard Medical School and several edtech and health tech companies that I have invested in before this. Before Shorelite, I helped found the healthcare division at Emeritus, helping universities like Johns Hopkins, Emory, MIT and Harvard build a series of executive education programs that scale to tens of millions of dollars within a couple of years. Finally, before that, I was at Global Education, leading transformation and growth across its portfolio of companies, some of them in the 100 million range and some of them in the $600 million range. So that gives you a general idea of my background.
- [02:17]
A
Thank you. And I've gotten to listen to you and know you over the years. Incredibly impressed. Talk a little bit. You've worked with companies and leaders focused on growth and transformation. What are some of the key levers that you see that great organizations can use that helps them to grow versus stall out? What do you see working? I know you've done a lot of work internationally, a lot of work blocking and tackling. You've been an advisor and a growth leader. What are some of the things that work and B, don't work?
- [02:48]
B
Yeah, it's a great question. You know, like, I think the best leaders crystallize the direction very fast and they develop conviction early, whether it's a turnaround or scale up. I've seen the same be true that it's important to align the board, the key players, and your executive team early. And I've learned this across, be it a startup like Emeritus or the larger enterprises that needs a turnaround so that's number one and number two, very quickly get into a particular rhythm and cadence of driving results, be it a pipeline management or be it a cadence of communication or optimizing implementation of a technology. So all of those things kind of getting into that cadence of activities that you need to drive to achieve something, I think that's the number two that's really important. And finally, I'll say this, that the team you build along with the culture you build it has to happen quickly and deliberately. So all of these things kind of work together with the right team, right culture and the right cadence. And that, that I think is the winning formula.
- [04:17]
A
Let's talk about that for a second. You had just mentioned sort of scaling, talent and culture. When organizations get to this scale up stage, when they really start thinking about scaling up, talk a little bit about, you know, sort of what works. What's the most common mistake you see in building leadership and teams and how can you correct course as you get into that scaling up stage? What works, what doesn't? What have you seen?
- [04:50]
B
Yeah, I think sometimes you hire talent too fast and sometimes you are too slow to hire. A good example for this, Scott, was during 2021, we had a great run. Capital markets were doing good and revenue growth was rewarded. So we hired quite rapidly to drive those revenue multiples. But very quickly in 22, we know the capital markets flipped and then instead of a revenue multiple being rewarded or revenue growth being rewarded, we had to become cash flow positive. So we had to flip very quickly to staffing and operational realities of moving from driving a revenue growth to driving a operational margin.
- [05:51]
A
If you will talk about scaling and transformation, both in companies that are growing and scaling, but also when you look at situations where you're undergoing major transformation, sometimes at a company that's already a large scale company, because you've worked with companies, particularly on boards, as an investor, they're already very large companies. Any differences and that the scaling of a growth company versus a major transformation at a larger scale company.
- [06:25]
B
Yeah, in the larger companies, including the work that I'm doing at Show Light now, the company has some significant value as well as teams that can grow into the direction that you are driving. And what you have to balance in the large company is who are your high performing, high potential talent that is a good fit for the turnaround or the growth that you want to scale, retain and elevate that talent. But then you need to build the new muscle that the organization needs for that future growth. So for that you need to inject talent into the organization. So one, identify the winners. Who's going to be your significant contributors from the existing team and you complement them with injecting talent from outside the organization. I think that balance is what's most critical for larger organizations then that's like the work that I'm doing at Shorelite now where the new muscle we are building is getting the. For the organization to become a marketing led digital platform. So we need to inject that talent into the organization and the organization historically has great international expertise. So so the people with that we elevate them and the new team is formed of both of these segments, the early stage companies or a startup. For example, the work I did at Emeritus where we were starting from just a concept, the entire team is new. So what really helped me in that to get velocity as I start is most of the team that were hired as the founding team were people that I had worked with before. So that helps us to. We already have chemistry and they have worked with me and, and that helps us accelerate that growth and get started very quickly. So that's how I would separate the priority for an early stage or a startup versus the large scale company where that needs a turnaround or growth.
- [09:07]
A
Thank you. And it really helps if you could bring along people that you really know their capabilities and the chemistry and how they work. I love that talk for a second about leadership in uncertain times. And it does feel like we've been moving through for the last decade. Uncertain times and complex times. Growth can often happen during volatility. How do you sort of advise boards and operationalize balancing boldness and really moving forward during uncertain times when some people might see a lot of risk and lots of challenges and, and, and concerns. How do you balance boldness in stepping forward during uncertainty?
- [09:54]
B
I think the boldness has a place in volatility. And the volatility can be your best friend if you embrace it decisively. It's when you have clarity, speed and creativity. During volatility, you can not only transform your organization, but potentially you are transforming how your entire industry segment can do business. Some great examples. When the pandemic hit, as you said, we've been in volatile times for a good part of a decade. When the pandemic hit, I had a business development team that worked across the United States in healthcare and that team entirely operated in person. So we had to transform how we did business overnight and within four months or so we have regained pre pandemic performance levels, having pivoted into an entirely new way of doing business. Now on the other side of the pandemic, you come out of it more efficient, more resilient, and a team that can get significantly more productivity based on all the new technology and the ways of operating we've done because we were challenged to operate in difficult times. I'll give one more example to illustrate this, which is from this year we had a pause of visa processing for international students to come into the United States. A complete pause from all the countries during the peak time of visa processing for the fall intake, which started just two months ago. During this time, instead of hunkering down, we reimagined how we communicate with our students who are waiting to come here. We accelerated a complete transformation of our go to market marketing channels and student journey optimizations. So we went on the offensive and accelerated our transformation during this time to recoup much of that disruption for the coming year and building and enhancing our partnerships with our channel network across 200 countries and the tens of thousands of students who are waiting to come and study in the United States. So those are two examples where we not only went on the offensive in volatile times, but we ended up creating and accelerating the new mode of how we will operate our business.
- [12:54]
A
And sometimes accelerating during uncertain times gives you a real advantage because many people can't do that or are scared to do that. Applause for taking those bold steps and how well it worked out. Take a moment, I'm going to ask you about a couple more subjects. The next one is board impact. You've served on growth boards, advisory boards, what makes an impactful board member and how could boards help to drive value in a company? Not so much on the governance side. I sort of view that as table stakes. But more importantly, how can a board help encourage or foster foster growth and business results?
- [13:40]
B
Yeah, that's exactly the right view to think about it. Right. So governance and oversight is really stable stakes. But how do you, how do you create value? And I'll give a couple of examples. Some of the early stage companies that I'm on the board, it's primarily two things. One is helping the founders when they need on strategy go to market and how they think about unlocking value and the and the pace and the speed of execution. Because I come from operators background, I can connect the strategy to execution and driving results. So that is something that I enjoy and I think where I personally create value and many of the other board members that I know do the same. The other one is access access to your network. For example. My network can be the business community, talent, advice and other Ways that these early stage companies need to grow their businesses. So it's advice, access, strategy are three of the things I think where we create value and I think the value creation that the board contributes happens quite a bit in between board meetings as well.
- [15:13]
A
Thank you. And I love that. Take a moment. Ranil and a couple other subjects we're seeing right now and you're a technology driven leader, give us a thought on how do you see AI automation and data reshaping growth strategy today? Camboards deal with the speed and disruption that we're seeing. Can they deal with that pace of change, so to speak?
- [15:47]
B
It's certainly top off the discussion topics for the groups that I'm involved with. For example, I'm part of the national association of Corporate Directors and in fact this week, this Wednesday we are hosting an AI in the Boardroom roundtable. So the conversations on AI adoption for the board, AI policy and strategy for the company, AI as it relates to growth, top of mind. And boards now need AI literacy and the same rigor really for the AI strategy as for financial oversight, it's as important. So think of how boards understand and assess risk ethics and the opportunities for the company. So the best leaders, board leaders, balance AI, machine speed or technology with human insights. I think that's the connection that's going to unlock value where if you think of it, AI will give you velocity, data gives you visibility and you can generate insights. But it's the leadership and your instinct and insights that you generate gives values value to the company as well.
- [17:20]
A
Thank you. And that concept on board of looking at that speed and disruption and the national association of Corporate Directors and what you're doing there and how you think about these issues is so important because we all need this growth as quickly as possible. At the same time, we need the right governance on it too. But many companies truly looking for that growth and trying to figure out how it makes them more efficient and move in the right direction. Reneil, you've guided many leaders and companies. How do you keep yourself and whenever I talk to you, I'm always taken by how principled and thoughtful you are and effective at getting things done. It's an incredible balance. Is there a personal principle or habit that's helped you to stay effective and focused through all the ups and downs of just the general business environment? How do you keep yourself focused and principled and effective?
- [18:20]
B
Yeah, I think it is something I actively think about it, Scott. So I think of three things before I engage with something, but I engage with it or not. How I decide to engage with something. I call it my personal trifecta, Impact Learning and people. Impact means can I really have a sizable impact in the opportunity? Learning is about am I going to learn something new? Am I going to expand myself? And people party is very important. The third one, which is am I going to enjoy working with the people that I'll be doing it with? Those three things are the three filters I use to assess an opportunity, be it the work I do at Showlight or the work I do at any of the boards, that's really helped me to stay energized. Know that it's rewarding, that when the work that you do has a significant impact, it's rewarding when you know that on top of having an impact, you're expanding yourself, you're learning something new. And three, you are doing both of that with people that you enjoy working with and really expanding a really valuable, thoughtful network of people who continue to add significant value and care to your life.
- [20:07]
A
Thank you very, very much. I love this threesome of ideas, impact, leadership and people. And I do think that really hits it really well. And I serve on some advisory boards. I serve on some boards. I think as I go forward, I'll think it in that way. Can one have an impact? Can they? Can they at least help leadership? And what are the people? Who are the people? What are the people? I love that concept. I often think about the first and partly the third, but this concept of impact, I think it's a constantly great question for a board member and advisor. Are you having an impact? What does that impact look like? Renell, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you joining us on the Becker Private Equity and Business podcast. We are featuring Ranil Harath as our business leader of the Month. Putting the spotlight Leader of the Month. It is such a great pleasure and honor to visit with you. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us today.
- [21:16]
B
Thank you, Scott. It's a pleasure to be here.