Colombo, Monday 05th June 2023: Tharindu Ameresekere of Millennium Toastmasters Club was crowned double champion at Ovation 2023, Toastmasters District 82 Conference (Sri Lanka & Maldives). He won 1st place in the Humorous Speech Contest as well as International Speech Contest (which is the pathway to the prestigious World Championship of Public Speaking).
With the latter win Tharindu’s speech is now submitted to the Regional Finals from which 28 semifinalists will be shortlisted globally.
He is also the only Toastmaster in Sri Lanka to have won district championships in 3 out of the 4 competition categories having won Table Topics (Impromptu speaking) championship of District 82 in 2015.
It has been a 9-year journey for Tharindu who started competing in 2014 and has since been sharpening his skills in public speaking via the Toastmasters program. His International Speech Contest winning speech titled “Swing It” was a motivational speech which spoke about the importance of giving all your efforts when you take a strike at a goal in life with reference to the game of golf which was delivered with a mix of humor and storytelling at the BMICH. His winning humorous speech was titled “A Strange Encounter” which spoke about strangers who could have a story to share with us and can leave a lasting impact on our lives if we are open to them.
In his acceptance speech he paid tribute to his first mentor and coach late DTM Ananda Chittambalam.
Tharindu Ameresekere is a Senior Lecturer at Postgraduate Institute of Management and an entrepreneur focused on digital marketing and corporate training. He has coached over 500 executives over the last 7 years in the areas of public speaking and presentation skills, digital marketing, sustainability and many other contemporary business and management related fields. His agency TAC has served over 150 local and foreign businesses to up their digital marketing game. He also is a senior CIMA lecturer at Wisdom Business Academy.
Tharindu is currently reading for his Doctorate at PIM and has obtained his MBA (Marketing) from the University of Colombo and his second masters in Project Management from the University of Southern Queensland, Australia having completed his BSc (Hons) in Computing from Staffordshire University (UK). Tharindu has also completed the professional qualifications, CIMA (UK), BCS (UK) and PQHRM (CIPM, SL). He is further a Certified NLP Coach (ABNLP, USA).