Simon Mitchell was born in Uganda in 1959. He moved to Rhodesia at nine months old. He left at sixteen to avoid the army and went to a minor UK public school and the University of London. Then, he did a postgraduate at Groupe Essec in Paris and returned to Zimbabwe post-independence. He battled the World Bank until they recruited him. In his twenty-five WB years, Simon lived in Washington, DC, Belgrade, and Rabat. After retirement, Simon followed his spouse with their twelve-year-old son when he was posted to Bangkok.