How Anuk Karunaratne became a rising star in the Blue Jays' front office

TORONTO -- Anuk Karunaratne has a tool he uses to help navigate tough decisions in his life. When he comes to such a fork in the road, he'll ask himself, “Would I regret this if I don't do it?”

The question ran through his mind in early 2017 when he spotted a job posting for vice president of strategy and analytics with the Toronto Blue Jays. He had a great job at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and had built a strong reputation there. You only get one chance to leave BCG, he thought. On the other hand, the consulting gig involved plenty of travel and with a pregnant wife at home, family life needed to be considered.

Karunaratne ultimately decided that the regret of not applying would weigh heavily on him, so he went for it. After advancing past the initial interview stage back in Toronto, he was invited to take in a Grapefruit League game with Blue Jays' leadership and found himself in a suite at Dunedin's Florida Auto Exchange Stadium — since renamed TD Ballpark — with team president Mark Shapiro and general manager Ross Atkins. The setting was relaxed, but he knew it was the crescendo.

"I kept reminding myself, 'Yeah, I'm hanging out in a suite. It’s casual conversation and I'm not being interviewed but, at the same time, it's still part of the interview process,’" Karunaratne recalls.

The Blue Jays had expressed to him a desire to become more data-driven, not just within baseball operations, but as an entire organization. The club said it wanted to incorporate more strategy into its decisions and enact a change in culture. While those were great buzz words, Karunaratne, who had forged an impressive resume for himself as a consultant and wanted to make sure the organization was a right fit for him too, wanted to find out just how sincere the team was about enacting change.

"It's easy to say, it's very hard to do," says Karunaratne. "And it takes alignment and buy-in from the very top of the organization down. It takes commitment to stay the course because those changes don't happen overnight. And so, I was trying to understand, like, hey, it's great that you say you want to do that, but do you understand what it's going to take? And are you committed to actually doing it and seeing it through? Because if not, I'm coming into a role that's not ultimately going to be effective."

He asked hard questions, questions that Shapiro appreciated.

"We’ve fostered a strong learning culture at the Blue Jays and have looked for leaders that are open-minded and constantly asking how we can get better," Shapiro says. "Anuk’s thoughtful curiosity stood out during his interview process — he asked intelligent questions throughout that demonstrated his openness to learning and collaborating."

Karunaratne joined the organization not long after that spring training contest and is now a rising star within it and the Blue Jays' executive VP, business operations. Named one of Sports Business Journal's Forty Under 40 earlier this year (on the day of his 40th birthday, no less), Karunaratne has been a key player helping shape the fan experience at Rogers Centre — impacting everything from food options and locations to the much-discussed placement of the bullpens — and the team’s off-field direction.

It's fair to say that not only is Karunaratne among the most influential people in the Toronto sports scene, but the Canadian baseball landscape as well.

KARUNARATNE'S PARENTS MOVED from Sri Lanka to Vancouver in 1979 to become PhD students at the University of British Columbia. He and his younger sister were born in Vancouver, but in late 1996, when Karunaratne was 14, his parents moved the family back to Sri Lanka.

"They both felt a sense of connection to their homeland," says Karunaratne, who is Sinhalese. "It was always something they thought about — moving back and contributing to the country."

The move obviously shook up Karunaratne's life. He wasn't totally fluent in the language and had never lived outside Canada. And not only was he leaving his friends, but also his beloved sports teams.

Karunaratne adored the Vancouver Canucks and witnessed the Pavel Bure era and '94 Stanley Cup run firsthand. He was a proud Grizzlies fan and loved watching the nearby Seattle Mariners during Ken Griffey Jr.’s prime. Karunaratne also grew fond of the Blue Jays, who were playing through their glory days in the early ’90s.

While he couldn't exactly keep up with what was happening with his teams back in Canada, he did manage to keep his passion for sports intact, diving into an affinity for cricket. That was a microcosm for the young Karunaratne, whose experience in Sri Lanka unlocked something in him that would be key to his life.

"That was the first time I had to adapt to completely new circumstances — brand new country, new everything — fit in with people and learn," says Karunaratne. "And so, that's something that I think I'm relatively good at, being able to adapt to new circumstances.

"That was the first time I had to go through it. And I think I grew in that."

That ability has guided Karunaratne through his career. He left Sri Lanka after high school and found himself in another entirely new situation when he moved to St. Louis in 2001 to pursue a biomedical engineering degree at Washington University.

Upon finishing his undergrad, Karunaratne worked at the university's medical school as a research assistant. He had originally planned to pursue his PhD — "Both my parents are PhDs. Growing up, I always expected that I had to do a PhD and my education wasn't done until I did that,” he says — but the year in the lab changed his mind. He altered course and found himself in another brand-new situation, moving to Toronto to work at a market research company focused on the medical device industry.

Karunaratne remained an avid sports fan, and later, while working at BCG, one specific project married that passion with his work. It was for a Toronto-based sports and entertainment organization; Karunaratne was tasked with working on a five-year strategy.

"That was my first introduction to sports business," he says. "I had the chance to help develop a business plan for this organization and was like, 'This is really cool.' It was a chance to work in the industry and field that I was very passionate about and interested in, doing the work that I was good at. Normally, I would do that exact same work for a bank or a grocery store chain or healthcare company or whatever.

"There was something that was really energizing about that," he adds. "Doing work that stuck with me."

It was that energy that ultimately led him to the Blue Jays in 2017.

"The mandate was, on the business side, we wanted to be more data-driven, we wanted to be innovative," Karunaratne says. "Similar to what we did in baseball, we wanted to use data to make decisions. We wanted to be a best-in-class organization."

Take something like the food and beverages available at Rogers Centre. Karunaratne and Co. would dive into fan insights, examining consumption patterns and other factors to make decisions on the ballpark’s menus as well as the best locations to offer each item. The approach applied to merchandise and ticket sales, as well as other areas.

"It's really trying to think about how we can use different types of information to make the best decision for our fans or for the business," he says.

Nowadays, Karunaratne — working jointly with Marnie Starkman, who holds the same title — oversees the club's business operations. His specific responsibilities lie in revenue generation — ticket sales, partnerships and Rogers Centre facility operations — in addition to Human Resources, IT and strategy.

Karunaratne was a key figure during the Blue Jays' navigation of border-issues during the COVID-19 pandemic, essentially acting as the organization's point man for conversations with government officials.

More recently, along with Starkman, Karunaratne is leading the Rogers Centre renovations, the first phase of which was executed during the off-season, with the next coming this winter.

"In Phase One, that was everything from doing ballpark visits to doing research to figuring out internally how do we collect all the feedback from the different groups within the organization that would inform the design — from operations, from fan experience, from security, from IT — from all these places to really think through the details of the design," says Karunaratne.

"To do it well, you have to really think through the details."

Those details are what Karunaratne does best. That's in part due to his inquisitive nature — the same impressive characteristic that was on display back in 2017 during his interviews with Shapiro.

"He brings that curiosity to our business today, asking questions that challenge our teams to continuously improve," says Shapiro.