Jan Jananayagam, co-founder of Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), is amongst eight women recognised for their achievements by INSEAD, one of the world’s top business schools.

"Here at INSEAD, we are proud to highlight some of the women we admire for their ambition, drive and passion to change the world one step at a time," the school said on its website.

In recognising Ms. Janayagam, who graduated with an MBA from INSEAD in 1997, the school highlighted TAG’s work, saying:

"Tamils Against Genocide focuses on assisting survivors of mass atrocities and crimes against humanity. They give individual assistance to asylum seekers who are fleeing persecution as well as seek to impact the legal frameworks through public interest litigation, policy via advocacy at the highest levels of government, and also by engaging with the media and supporting academic research. A large part of their work also consists of evidence-gathering of systemic crimes perpetrated by state authorities."

Asked about her inclusion in INSEAD’s list, Ms. Jananayagam told Tamil Guardian by email,

"[This] is in fact a recognition of the work by TAG’s incredibly talented volunteers, and especially those that have to work anonymously due to the serious risk to friends and family back in Sri Lanka."

The INSEAD statement quoted Ms. Jananayagam as saying:

"I started up the European arm of the non-profit in 2011 with seed funding by a well-known rapper, M.I.A, and leveraged a network of professional volunteers in law, international relations, medicine and other relevant fields. It has been very satisfying to be able to impact policy and influence public opinion as well as the law in areas such as asylum and accountability for mass atrocities."

The Financial Times’ ‘Global MBA Ranking 2014’ lists the world’s top business schools as Havard, Stanford, London Business School, Wharton, and, ranked together, Colombia and INSEAD.