The practitioner

Surani Sahabandu

Senior Marketing Practitioner · Melbourne

20 years building brands, managing teams, and running marketing across Australia and Asia. Now available to your business, part-time.

Background

Why Twelve Point North exists.

Most growing businesses hit the same wall. They need senior marketing thinking but cannot justify a full-time Head of Marketing at $160K or more. So they hire a junior person, brief an agency, or do it themselves. None of those options give them what they actually need: experienced commercial judgment applied to their specific situation.

Twelve Point North was built to close that gap. One senior practitioner, embedded part-time, working directly with you. No account manager between us. No junior team doing the work. Just someone who has run the full marketing function before, doing it for your business.

The name comes from the compass. Twelve points of direction, with north as the anchor. Marketing works the same way: there are many things you could do, but a clear point of north makes every decision easier.

Most recently

Brand & Marketing Manager

Floorworld Pty Ltd

47-store national flooring franchise. National marketing strategy across brand, digital, CRM, communications, and local area marketing. $644K FY27 budget. CRM migration from HubSpot to GoHighLevel. Brand refresh. AI governance framework across Marketing, Operations, and Finance.

Before that

General Manager, Marketing

Ceylon Biscuits Ltd (Munchee)

$8M marketing budget across 24 brands. Team of 12. 4% market share gain. 20% ROAS improvement. Launched into new regional markets across Asia.

Career

20 years. Five countries. One discipline.

Brand & Marketing Manager

Floorworld Pty Ltd

47-store national franchise. Led national strategy, $644K budget, CRM migration, brand refresh, and AI governance. Built a conference delegate PWA for 150 attendees.

40%+ lead uplift 25% conversion lift 30% organic growth

General Manager, Marketing

Ceylon Biscuits Ltd (Munchee)

Asia

$8M budget. Team of 12. 24 brands. Regional expansion across Asia. Positioned Munchee as the dominant biscuit brand in its category.

$8M budget managed 4% market share gain 20% ROAS lift

Head of Sales & Marketing

Elephant House Ice Cream

Asia

Part of John Keells Holdings. Quadrupled profitability over 4 years through repositioning, channel expansion, and pricing strategy.

Head of Sales & Marketing

JAT Holdings

Asia

Pre-IPO growth phase. Built the marketing function from the ground up ahead of a public listing.

Brand Manager

Unilever Sri Lanka

Asia

Knorr and Marmite. Trained in the Unilever brand management discipline: consumer insight, campaign rigour, and commercial accountability.

Credentials

Qualifications and tools.

Formal qualifications

MBA · PGIM, University of Sri Jayewardenepura

CIMA UK · Qualified Management Accountant

BSc First Class Honours · University of Colombo

Platforms and tools

HubSpot (5 yrs)GoHighLevel (2 yrs)Google Ads Meta AdsGA4Looker Studio WordPressShopifyMake ZapierNext.jsReact FigmaNotionSlack

AI tools in active use

ClaudeChatGPTGemini

Applied across marketing workflows: diagnosis, content, CRM, reporting, and custom app development.

How I work

What working together actually looks like.

You deal with one person

I do the work. There is no account manager who takes the brief and hands it to someone else. When you email, I reply. When we meet, I present. When something is delivered, I built it.

I work at the level of the business, not just marketing

MBA qualified. CIMA trained. I read P&Ls, I understand unit economics, and I connect marketing investment to commercial outcomes. That is not common in marketing practitioners.

I tell you what I think

If your CRM is a mess, I will say so. If your agency is underperforming, I will show you why. If a channel is not worth the budget, I will say that too. You are paying for judgment, not agreement.

I am comfortable with the full stack

Strategy to execution. Brand to performance. Presentation to the board, then building the HubSpot workflow. Most senior marketers can do one or the other. I do both.

Ready to talk?

Start with a 30-minute conversation. No pitch. No obligation. Just a clear view of where your marketing is and what would make the biggest difference first.

Book a free call See how it works →