Profile of Guest Speaker Joaquin “Quinito” M. Henson

Joaquin “Quinito” M. Henson, Sports Journalist / Sports Broadcaster

Joaquin M. Henson is well-known in media as a sports journalist and sports broadcaster. He writes a column A Sporting Chance in the Philippine Star five days a week and appears as an analyst for the Philippine Basketball Association on TV. Quinito has been recognized for his excellence in journalism as the only sports columnist to be cited back-to-back by the Catholic Mass Media Awards, the only sports columnist to receive the Philippine Olympic Committee award for Olympism and the only sports columnist to be honored with the Sport-For-All award by the Philippine Olympic Committee and the Philippine Sports Commission. His works have been published in the US and UK.

He has covered on site such events as the London Olympics, the FIBA World Championships in 2002, 2014 and 2019, the World Taekwondo Championships, Formula 1 racing, boxing title fights all over the world, the NBA Finals, the NBA All-Star Game, the Asian Games and the Southeast Asian Games. In 2019, he became the first and only Asian tapped by FIBA, the world federation of basketball, to broadcast the FIBA World Cup to a global audience on TV.

Quinito is often invited to speak before students in schools from Tuguegarao to Koronadal, professionals in inspirational talks for such institutions as Metrobank, PhilAm Life Insurance and HSBC and members of organizations such as Rotary Clubs from Manila to Pampanga to Tarlac to Pangasinan.

Quinito's other side is his professional background in microfinance. For over 30 years, he was Managing Director of the Kaunlaran Kabuhayan Microcredit Corp., the Eduardo Cojuangco Foundation and Botika Sama Sama which is engaged in socialized dispensing of medicine. Quinito has retired as Managing Director and in 2017, was conferred the prestigious honor of Adopted Son of Tarlac by the provincial government for his socio-civic-economic contributions, only the fourth in history and the first in 20 years. He has lectured on microfinance before the United Nations in Geneva and Lyon, France and met with Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus at the World Microcredit Summit in Washington D. C.

Quinito played a key role in implementing two landmark projects in Tarlac--Project Free which provided scholarships for about 2,000 public school teachers in their Masteral and doctorate studies and Project Hope which provided scholarships in tech-voc skills courses and employment opportunities for close to 1,000 out-of-school youth. Before his involvement in microfinance, Quinito was Vice President of Bancom Development Corp. and Union Bank of the Philippines.

Quinito earned Liberal Arts and Commerce degrees, majors in Economics and East Asian Studies, cum laude, at La Salle and a Master's degree in Business at the Asian Institute of Management. He is married to the former Carmencita (Menchu) Genato with a daughter Cristina. Quinito is an avid squash player and a consultant with the La Salle seniors basketball team. He is a strong Catholic and a devoted family man.