Simultaneously, she held high professional positions: Leelamma was a panel member of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations for performing Mohiniyattam abroad, and part of Doordarsan’s team that selected dancers for the channel’s shows. She was an expert member of dances at the universities of Kannur, Mahatma Gandhi (Kottayam), Kerala (Thiruvananthapuram) and the state government’s department of education besides at Kalamandalam and at Kalady-based Sree Sankara Sanskrit University, where she was a reader for three years from 1995. A winner of the 1990 Kerala Sangeeta Nataka Akademi award and a holder of senior fellowship from union culture ministry (1997), Leelamma, who spent her childhood at semi-hilly Mattakkara village and later learned dance under Kalamandalam Sathyabhama, A.R.R. Bhaskar and Kalamandalam Chandrika, had settled near Thrissur at Athani, where she ran the Swati Chitra dance school. The author of an authentic book on Mohiniyattam, she features in a CD brought out by the national broadcaster and a documentary by famed filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan. Leelamma also happened to figure in an early 1970s record that has now turned out to be the oldest video clip on Mohiniyattam—and seen in a famed Malayalam movie.