Mohamed Muhsin, who also served as Vice President and CIO at the World Bank, fondly remembers his days at Trinity College, his first assignment as a teacher at Trinity and his days as a journalist.
The Boy at Trinity College
Born in Kandy, M.V.Muhsin attended the elite Trinity College at Kandy, a school providing primary and secondary education and founded by the Anglican missionaries.
While at Trinity, he got involved with the Social Service Union by offering his services at a dispensary run by Trinity at Mahiayawa, which treated the poor and underprivileged. The seeds of working towards human development were first sown at Trinity.
At Trinity, he was also was the Head Prefect and was also awarded the Ryde Gold Medal (an annual award for the best student) in 1962. He was also the editor of the school magazine. Mohamed Muhsin wanted to pursue a career in medicine which eventually did not come to light. After his secondary education, he took up a teaching career with Trinity for a year.
Passion for Journalism
Being urged by his mother to pursue further studies, he migrated to Colombo to study Accountancy. Mohamed Muhsin is a Chartered Accountant and a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka.
As he pursued his career in Accountancy, M.V.Muhsin also became extremely passionate about journalism. Journalism, according to Mohamed Muhsin, brings into us a discipline - a discipline of analysis, a discipline of meeting deadlines and a discipline of being balanced and of verifying your facts. He recollects his teaching career and life in journalism as the most satisfying periods in his life. He wrote articles for the Times of Ceylon. An incident worth recollecting is, when, the then Minister of Sport K.B. Ratnayake, changed the cricket team players after reading reviews from one of his sports columns.
Orator and Philanthropist
Mohamed Muhsin is involved in foundations which globally promotes the use of computer-related techniques to share knowledge. He is also the Vice Chairman of World Links, a global organization, which promotes computer literacy in schools in the developing world. Muhsin envisage a time when computers in Sri Lanka can be of great help to both children and the farmer.
Mohamed Muhsin is an eloquent speaker and has been a highly favored keynote speaker at global IT conferences. His speeches and articles have been great sources of inspiration to students, parents and teachers alike.
His love for cricket has led him to write several newspaper columns in Sri Lanka's National newspapers. Supporting the anti-tobacco campaigns in his article, To smoke or not to smoke, that is the question, he has provided specifics and the sentiment of people around the world towards the campaign. Another of his thought provoking articles Beg No More to a daily gives novel ways on poverty reduction.
M.V.Muhsin now lives in Washington DC., with his wife Sithy. She is an alumnus of Ladies' College, Colombo. Sithy runs a school in Sri Lanka. They have two children - daughter who is in New York and a son in San Francisco. He also has three grandsons. He takes part in philanthropic activities, some of which are in Kandy. Mohamed Muhsin is deeply religious and believes that the role played by humans in human development and economic development is God's own work.
Read more about Mohamed Muhsin.
