Tag: unwomen40womenleaders

Partner at East Ventures

In the Indonesian venture capital world, Melisa Irene is a welcome anomaly for two reasons: she is one of the first women Partners in South East Asia, but also among the youngest in the region to reach this position, at only 25. 

The year Irene graduated, “disruptive innovation” was rampant in Jakarta. Venture capital firms mushroomed and Tokopedia, today Indonesia’s first online marketplace, became the first tech enterprise in Southeast Asia to secure a US$100 million investment, the largest round of funding in Indonesian startup history. It was East Ventures who five years earlier, provided the tech unicorn its first injection of funds – it was also the VC firm’s first investment. 

Irene did not have any investment experience nor digital industry knowledge when she obtained her first full-time job at East Ventures in 2015. But she wanted to be part of the massive digital transformation that her country was undergoing. She was soon involved in the largest exit deal of the firm, when Grab acquired East Ventures-backed startup Kudo for US$100 million. It didn’t take long before she was appointed Partner and was the first woman to hold this high-ranking position in the firm, a position that most people don’t reach until their 30s or later. 

Unlike other early-stage investors championing women empowerment, East Ventures adopts a gender-agnostic posture in its investment strategy, promoting entrepreneurial innovation beyond any form of discrimination, either negative or positive. East Ventures also shows gender diversity in their portfolio enterprises, that is considered good by the standards of the global VC industry. The share of women founders remains at a low 10% but Irene witnesses a continuous improvement. In the latest four deals she managed at the firm, all the enterprises had a woman in a leadership position. If there is much room for further advancement, Irene considers that an overfocus on the gender-lens tends to divert people from the roots of the problem – socio-cultural or economic inequalities. For her, gender equality should be achieved through meritocracy, not by “pitying” women. 

A lot of traditional gender-based roles and inequalities are correlated with social and economic deprivation. “If you are able to develop a product that touches upon the life of people who live on $2 a day, it is inherently impactful” she explains. Gender equality could be promoted through a more intersectional approach. In Irene’s words, “to impact the small fisherman’s wife, think first about how to improve the livelihoods of people in fishing villages and the rural populations”. 

Irene’s view on the gender-lens is the embodiment of a generation that prioritizes an all-inclusive development, rather than focusing on gender-based investment strategy. In 2007, when Tokopedia’s founder William Tanuwijaya first pitched his project, he was told that there were no local success stories in Indonesia to justify investment in his business. With East Ventures, the backer of 4 unicorns and 170 startups, Irene has already co-written plenty of them and is eager to build more stories that will also include women. If the Indonesian female-led unicorn is yet to come, it is a much needed success story in the startup world. Irene might be the one who will help fix this other anomaly, so that it becomes the norm.

Principal at Alpha JWC Ventures

Melina knew from the moment she started in the VC world that she wanted to be one of the pioneers in the rising, male-dominated industry. Having supported many startups to successfully grow, she wants to empower more women to lead and establish Indonesia’s next unicorn.

Dreaming of becoming a woman entrepreneur was not a common wish in the Yogyakarta of the 1990s, where Melina grew up. Most women around her were expected to get married in their Twenties and stay at home. But Melina looked up to her mother, co-running a small family business of building materials with her father. “We lived above the store, and I admired how she managed to take care of our family, running back and forth between the customers at the store downstairs and our home, to help me with my homework,” Melina recalls. 

Freshly graduated in accounting, she joined the prestigious consulting group McKinsey in 2014, through a one-year program designed for local young graduates. Two years later,  the global consultancy had created a sensation when it released a report foretelling Indonesia’s digital future and suggested that the country could become the seventh-largest economy by 2030. As a consultant, Melina’s work focused on projects exploring this digital transformation in the making, from the banking sector to e-commerce development and technology empowerment. From there, she made it her goal to spearhead the digital shift her country was undergoing. Local venture capital firms were still few in Indonesia, and Melina saw it as the most appropriate structure to support and scale the fast-growing tech ecosystem. She joined the just-established Alpha JWC Ventures firm, despite knowing that this burgeoning VC industry was a male-dominated one. 

Over the last three years at Alpha JWC Ventures, Melina has spurred over 15 investments, including major Indonesian startup success stories such as the coffee chain Kopi Kenangan, and the tech capsule hotel Bobobox. She has also seen the industry becoming more gender diverse. Alpha JWC Ventures has not taken any official pledge for GLI and doesn’t use a specific approach towards gender equality. However, women are represented at all levels of the firm’s pyramid and the firm continuously tries to improve gender diversity at the board levels of their portfolio enterprises. 

Melina supports a more open conversation about investing with a gender lens. Misconceptions that GLI would imply a lower filter are still widespread. “Plenty of data prove that enterprises who better take women into consideration increase their profit margins; this is verified in all business aspects of a enterprise: from the management point of view, to the recruitment point of view and the product point of view”, she stresses. 

This does not mean applying a double standard though. “One female founder told me that she was once questioned by investors after a pitching session, if she was married or planned to have kids, because if that’s the case they wonder how the enterprise could grow or sustain itself. This is something you would not see happen to  male founders”, Melina relates. Women don’t want to be treated as people with special needs, or doomed to face work constraints in the future. In Melina’s words, “We don’t want words like ‘it should be hard for you’. Don’t lower expectations towards women or treat them as if they have more limitations and hence do not deserve equal opportunities”. 

To her, it is also ironic on how the local society sometimes relates women to marital status and expectations. Single career women are often said “to have their own limits one day”, working mothers are “forced to make sacrifices”, and divorced ones are “unable to commit”. Even when they are not verbalized, these ideas still govern some business decisions and indirectly contribute to the gender promotion and funding gap. For her part, Melina makes sure that before investing in women, investors first start to look at them through a fairer lens.

Executive Director of the Business Coalition for Women Empowerment (IBCWE)

She almost came to women empowerment by accident, but is 100% determined to bring gender equality into business conversations to prove that women’s empowerment is not just a philanthropic virtue-signalling: it is also based on fundamental economic rationales.  

Maya grew up in an environment with few gender stereotypes. Her parents gave her and her brother equal choice to do either dance or martial arts – she eventually opted for the second. Maya later pursued a twenty-year career in HR, free of the “work-family life balance” puzzle, with no dependent children at home. When Shinta Kamdani (see page X) invited her to join the Indonesian Business Coalition for Women Empowerment (IBCWE), along with other gender equality advocates, she did not fully identify with  the mission. 

She was once given the task to put on these “gender lenses” everyone talked about by looking around and investigating who among her family and friends had stepped away from their career. This is how she suddenly realized how frequently women had quit their job after a marriage or a pregnancy. She also remembered all the high-potential female talents she had recruited in her career, who had resigned while on the way to top leadership positions. She thought about a promotion she had missed, or the sexual harassment which made her leave her first job 25 years ago. 

That is how Maya became full-time engaged in the IBCWE, a membership-based organization founded in 2016 and composed of about 20+ enterprises focusing on gender equality in the workplace. IBCWE provides a wide range of services to help its members shape a gender-sensitive corporate environment. Activities range from gender sensitisation workshops to the design and assessment of gender policies, as well as HR support through the access to curated female talent networks. 

“Gender lens is not just a checkbox exercise”, insists Maya. “It requires to look at the needs of both men and women when making a decision, and to consider how this decision will affect them differently”. Even well-intentioned policies could bear unconscious bias and trigger negative effects. The Indonesian labour law for instance, states that employers have to pay for return/round trip transport for women doing a late shift. This is in fact a lose-lose measure. First, it assumes that men are not exposed to harassment or night violence, thus failing to give them equal safety guarantees. Second, it plays against female candidates, who now represents a higher cost compared to their male competitor. 

To address this kind of issue, IBCWE encourages good-practice sharing between its members and distinguishes best-in-class with the Economic Dividend for Gender Equality (EDGE) – a voluntary business certification based on international assessment standards. Maya believes that good-will talks on women empowerment do no harm, but will fail to catalyze change in workplace policy-making and practices. 

It is now time for businesses to  consider gender inequality as a serious drawback to their sustainable growth. “If Indonesia wants to be among the world’s five largest economies over the next 50 years, it is imperative to better value women’s role in the process of economic growth” she urges.

Angel Investor & Chairman of JAC Recruitment

As one of the most active angel impact investors in Indonesia, Mariko Asmara has set herself the mission to improve the livelihoods of marginalized children and youth. After spending 20 years hunting for senior talents with JAC Recruitment, she is now fully dedicated to mentoring social businesses that build human capital at the grassroots.   

On the morning of 17 July 2009, a suicide bomber detonated at the JW Marriott, where Mariko was having a breakfast meeting with other business leaders. Mariko and 49 others were wounded. 9 people were killed. That was a life-changing moment for her. As the head of a successful recruitment firm, she suddenly realised that outside of the central business districts and high-powered business circles of foreign-graduate CEOs, pockets of poverty and poor education levels were becoming a breeding ground for terrorist violence in Indonesia. “I reflected on what I had done all those years. At this point, I could either go back to normal life, or try to bring a positive change in society”. She chose the second option. 

For several years, Mariko engaged with various philanthropic organisations, but high-society fundraising events and charity dinners soon appeared too far away from the communities she intended to reach. “I wanted to create impact at the bottom-of-the-pyramid and I didn’t know how. But I thought grassroots change agents would”. In 2015, she stepped down as CEO at JAC Recruitment and embarked on her angel investing journey. Six months later, she made her first investment in an Indian women’s safety app and co-founded Ango Ventures, a venture capital firm. Today, her portfolio comprises 13 enterprises that have generated together 1,500 jobs across the sectors of healthcare, agriculture, microfinance and education. 

The primary goal of Mariko’s impact investing is to provide quality life and education for underprivileged youth. Empowering the mothers who nurture the kids into adulthood, is for her the most effective way to guarantee them with a supportive learning environment. “When you reach the mothers, you increase the multiplier effect and the depth of your impact” she explains. To Mariko, impact angel investing is more about building a trusted relationship, than having good impact metrics. “I create impact by supporting small businesses beyond the hype and personally mentoring them, not by relying on an established set of tools”. 

Half-japanese, Mariko has always been exposed to two different work cultures. Compared to Japan, she sees that women and men with similar qualifications, benefit from relatively equal opportunities and fair treatment when it comes to recruitment in Indonesia. The work environment is not yet well adapted for women returning to work after having children. This often costs enterprises their female talent. In the early 200s at JAC Recruitment Indonesia, headquartered in Japan, Mariko pioneered the implementation of a regulation to allow more flexible working hours and career evolutions for her female staff. This was a groundbreaking move for the rigid japanese corporate culture, but as it proved to curb the hemorrhage of women talent and the HQ eventually replicated her approach in other countries. 

enterprises have to take the lead in building a parent friendly workplace, because changing prevalent gender social and cultural norms will take time. “Working women are expected to endorse and perform multiple roles: this puts increasing pressure on them as they climb the corporate ladder”. Throughout her career, Mariko noticed how women’s own high expectations inhibited their self-confidence to take on leadership positions and claim what they are entitled to. As a chairman and a business mentor, Mariko wants to bring more women to “get the dignity that they deserve”.

Vice President of SEAF Indonesia

After several years working in private finance, Katharina found her passion in supporting fellow women who share her dream of becoming entrepreneurs. Through Small Enterprise Assistance Funds (SEAF), she helps to create shared value for women, entrepreneurs, and investors. 

When Katharina decided to study accounting and finance, it probably never struck her mind that she would one day put her hands into the croissant manufacturing business. Last year, Katharina helped SEAF, an impact investment management firm that focuses on SMEs in emerging markets, to close its first gender-lens deal in Indonesia with BEAU, a woman-led artisan bakery business. Since then, she has been personally involved in all the nuts and bolts of the business, caring about it as if it was her own.  

After completing her studies in Austria, Katharina returned to Indonesia to work for a local private equity management firm, before entering the venture capital world. She was astonished  to see that most of the CEOs she dealt with were men. She was herself the only woman in her venture capital firm that specialized in fast-growing tech startups – another male-dominated field. “The whole ‘VC’ style is quite man-friendly,” she remarks half-jokingly. So when SEAF approached the VC firm in search of small women-led businesses for their Women Opportunity Fund, she was almost naturally designated to manage the deal. This did not make the hunt any easier though. Businesses were either not fast-growing, or women-led but still men-owned (typically the father or the husband). Women entrepreneurs were often wary of funding instruments such as US-denominated debt or equity instruments. It soon appeared that the deal-making process required a more customized approach to make the match-making happen. 

Katharina became so passionate about this new mission of supporting warrior women entrepreneurs, that she made it her full-time job and joined SEAF. At the same time, she had become co-founder of a fashion outlet brand. “I reflected on how I would build my legitimacy later, if I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to see the ‘do and don’t’ before getting myself fully engaged” explains Katharina. 

At first, Katharina thought GLI was more hype than substance. “Empowering small women entrepreneurs” was to her tinged with the assumption that women are “limited to ‘petty endowment’ and unable to get the bigger, commercial ones”. Her GLI analysis has now greatly evolved to more fully consider the implications of gender equality, from pay equity to professional development. SEAF has developed its own “Gender Equality Scorecard” (GES), to identify gender-related gaps and opportunities across all their portfolio enterprises and potential investees, either man or women-led. In Katharina’s words, “If we want GLI to be a mainstream financial scheme, we cannot keep women entrepreneurs into the small, cushioned world of microfinance”. 

For Katharina, the gender lens conversation cannot be just a story about women. GLI means “to look more intentionally at the other side of the world” she says. What matters is not the amount of money that is poured into the women’s cause, or even making new investments. It is about thinking how to create a meaningful impact where women or men are disproportionately disadvantaged due to their gender. “There are a lot of biases that we already know, but also a lot that we just don’t want to admit. To move ahead, we need a healthy share of men and women onboard. We cannot leap on one foot!”. 

Katharina speaks the language of sophisticated finance and knows the daily routine of women entrepreneurs. As such, she makes the perfect information broker between the two worlds, to value on both sides the wide spectrum of funding instruments and analysis tools yet to be fully tapped.

Lawmaker, Deputy Chairman of the House of Representatives (DPR) Commission X

A natural politician and trained researcher, Hetifah combines the best of both worlds to help Indonesia empower women and marginalized communities. 

“Can you imagine if there’s three women?” Hetifah remembers one lawmaker once commented when they were proposing a minimum 30% quota for women commissioners in the General Election Commission (KPU). Apparently, the idea of having three women out of seven seats was unthinkable by the lawmaker but that encouraged Hetifah even more. 

“I have promised to open the door for other women to achieve their dreams, for them to realize their potential,” Hetifah says.

In the thirty years of her career, Hetifah always sees the world through some kind of a gender lens no matter what she does. Today, she is known as a lawmaker sitting in the House of Representatives (DPR) from Golkar Party, one of the largest political parties in Indonesia. She has been in the house for three consecutive periods since 2009. Commission X, where Hetifah sits as deputy chairman, is responsible for education, culture, youth, sports, and tourism.

Hetifah was not always in politics. The Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) graduate started her journey as a researcher and activist. In 1992, along with other academics, Hetifah founded AKATIGA, an independent and non-profit research organization. Hetifah was involved in studies and workshops around gender budgeting for local administrations.

“All of our research was divided by gender. If we were looking at workers’ issues, for example, we would look at the impact based on gender. So, we have been trained to collect data based on that,” Hetifah says.

Twenty-eight years after its conception, AKATIGA still strongly stands, influencing policy changes in Indonesia with the aim of providing sustainable livelihoods for the poor and marginalized groups.

After completing her masters degree in public policy at the National University of Singapore, Hetifah felt a desire to create more impact. That momentum came following Indonesia’s 1998 reformation.

“I felt that the data and information I produced as a researcher were good, but it did not have any influence on the policies. Advocacy was still difficult at the time because there wasn’t a good relationship between the non-governmental organizations and the government,” Hetifah says.

So, Hetifah decided to cross over. As a female lawmaker, Hetifah had to do a lot of convincing on her first days in the office. “I had to first show that I am reliable,” Hetifah says.

Women have fought long and hard to be given a seat in Indonesian politics. As history shows, they have to band together and help each other to move forward.

Hetifah is part of Golkar Party Women’s Corps (KPPG), which aims to improve women’s participation and leadership within the party. The mother of four is also active in Indonesian Parliamentary Women’s Caucus (KPPRI) and Indonesian Women’s Congress (KOWANI).

Today, within the House of Representatives itself, more women are taking strategic, leadership positions.

Hetifah is currently focusing on creating laws on remote schooling and how it impacts families especially women. She is also pushing for more upskilling programs for women workers.

For Hetifah, pushing the agenda of gender lens investing means advocating for more gender equality in leadership within the DPR. That means consciously directing one’s attention to women and giving them a chance to exercise leadership in all sectors, like science and technology, and not just in traditionally “feminine” ones.

Second, implementing GLI means constructing policies that are informed by gender-conscious data. This is why investing in research organizations – both government-owned and independent – becomes crucial. Hetifah believes Indonesia will do well if it has as many sources as possible supplying information surrounding gender. 

“Today, we only rely on the Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection Ministry (KPPPA) for such data,” Hetifah says. 

Research organizations like AKATIGA could play an important role in supporting policy makers become more gender-conscious in their decisions. Meanwhile, figures like Hetifah are desperately needed to influence the political will for women empowerment in Indonesia.

Partner at Egon Zehnder 

A senior consultant with more than 20 years experience in accounting and financial services, Henny has mentored thousands of entrepreneurs and business leaders to help them find and fulfill their aspirations. 

The eldest in a modest family of three daughters, self-sufficiency and economic independence prevailed over personal vocation when Henny had to make her career choices. She studied accounting, a path that seemed more stable and lucrative than the job of French teacher she had initially dreamt of. After starting her career as a consultant for a Jakarta-based US enterprise, she eventually managed to obtain a full-ride scholarship and pursued her studies at the prestigious Harvard Business School. 

But teaching and mentoring have always been Henny’s “thing”, ever since she tutored other highschool students. Her passion for guiding people towards self-advancement never left. Over her 20-year-long career at Egon Zehnder, a global management and executive search firm, she has been advising and encouraging numerous businessmen and women, who hold top-level positions in the financial sector, including BTPN Syariah’s President Director Ratih Rachmawaty. As an active mentor at Endeavour, a nonprofit organization supporting high-impact entrepreneurs in emerging markets, she has also sowed the seeds of many Indonesian startup’s success over the last few years. 

Henny never deliberately applied a gender lens when supporting her mentees, but she noticed the gender gap at the two extremities of the career pyramid. Firstly, women are still a minority among the early-stage entrepreneurs who take the mic at Endeavour’s pitching competition. For Henny, the entrepreneurial journey is an insecure one, without the  “safety net” child-bearers might look for. Secondly, women though women commonly hold middle management positions, gender diversity is still a far-fetched reality at the top-tier. For Henny, women’s “self-imposed” glass-ceiling is the primary obstacle to reach senior managerial roles. “Women tend to lower their ambition and to exert self-restraint when formulating job or salary expectations to their hierarchy” observed Henny.  

To foster the shift in mindset, Henny champions the Harvard Business School’s “Women on Board” global campaign, to attract more senior business women on corporate boards in Indonesia. For Henny, peer-to-peer networks and role models play a key role in backing up women’s ambition. She is herself involved in several groups of women in finance or consultancy. ”The community is relatively new but is growing in Jakarta, where several top strategy consulting firms, like Kearney and McKinsey, are now led by women” says Henny confidently.

enterprises must shoulder their share of responsibility too. Before joining Egon Zehnder, Henny held a hectic job with another enterprise, involving constant business trips abroad. Then, she had her first child. Travelling six days a week became increasingly difficult with a two year-old daughter at home. Egon Zehnder was just opening an office in Jakarta and offered her more flexible work arrangements. 23 years later, she is still at Egon Zehnder and has witnessed the increasing share of women in the enterprise, due to a sustained effort to foster gender equality in the workplace. ”When I first joined the firm, women accounted for only 15% of total staff worldwide. There is now a perfect gender parity, except at our Jakarta’s office: we have only one male employee!” she laughs. Offering childcare facilities and flexible schedules seem like basic matters, but are nonetheless as important as building women’s self-confidence. 

Henny has a lot of success stories worth sharing, both with corporate leaders and self-doubting talents, to show that they both have a role to help women break their own glass-ceiling.

Actor and United Nations SDG Mover for Gender Equality

Hannah is an Indonesian actor known for her persistent and vocal campaigns on women’s rights and gender issues within the film industry and beyond. She is a loyal ally, effective influencer and valuable voice in the women empowerment movement.  

All that young Hannah wanted to do was play soccer. She was extremely puzzled when the boys didn’t want to pass the ball to her and her friends. They said girls didn’t know how to play. So, Hannah went to the head teacher and asked for a specific time just for the girls to play. It was granted.

“I remember the boys were so annoyed about it,” Hannah grins.

That soccer field dispute was Hannah’s first encounter with gender constructs – as if the world was built separately for girls and for boys. But Hannah rebels against that arrangement.

At home, Hannah was always encouraged to achieve whatever she wanted. Her parents tended to prioritize her education over her brothers’ as they were aware how things could be more difficult for women. She was also always encouraged to speak up when she felt something was not right.

“I’ve been quite privileged to have grown up already in that kind of family environment, feeling that there’s a support system there and people that understand,” Hannah says.

Hannah, who is of a mixed Indonesian-French heritage and grown up in the UK, had an extremely close connection with Indonesia through her father. It was under his influence that she decided to pursue a degree in Indonesian and Development Studies from School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. Upon graduation, Hannah went to Indonesia hoping to work in the development sector. But as fate would have it, the programs she was after were closed and she ended up joining the film industry.

After more than a decade working as an actress, she has built a platform where she actively campaigns about gender discrimination. In 2017, the UNDP approached her to become a Sustainable Development Goal mover for gender equality. The opportunity gave her a chance to meet with a broader range of people, visit women living in remote villages and develop campaigns across various mediums.

“A lot of it is looking at existing programs and how I help with my platform to amplify them,” Hannah says.

To celebrate the United Nations worldwide 16 Days of Activism campaign, Hannah created her own series of videos where public figures speak about their experiences with sexual violence on camera. The campaign saw a series of shareable videos being distributed on social media. It successfully generated a buzz about the topic – often considered taboo in Indonesia – and raised the public’s awareness.

Hannah is currently working to draw attention to the issue of sexual harassment against women on film sets. She engages decision makers and pushes them to implement sexual harassment clauses in contracts. All in all, she pushes the film industry to change how it operates and treats its women workers, while highlighting that the problem exists in all industries.

As a female celebrity speaking up about gender issues, Hannah encounters resistance and harassment herself. In most cases, the average person does not share the same understanding of the effects of living in a patriarchal society.

“There’s always going to be backlash when you’re trying to make positive change, and when you’re trying to go against the status quo. But, fundamentally, the very core of my principle is based on what I feel to be just and fair,” Hannah says.

Despite the obstacles, Hannah is hopeful the movement is growing and that society is truly shifting.

“We’ve been able to more and more have these conversations,” Hannah says.

Hannah believes GLI means a more meaningful way to channel capital. For women, economic empowerment could be a powerful tool for access and opportunities. GLI is a consequential aspect within the spectrum of gender equality issues. Creating their own income and having that financial independence could give women the same level of agency and confidence as men.

“It’s definitely important to talk about fair redistribution to women who have been held back all this time,” Hannah says.

Co-founder and CEO of Dokter.id, Medico

Hailing from one of the most established conglomerate families in Indonesia, Grace is determined to establish her own legacy in the healthcare world. Grace believes in the power of female founders as a catalyst for greater impact.

“I always wanted to become a movie director, which in a sense, is kind of like an entrepreneur too!” says Grace, recalling her childhood dream. Her father, a successful businessman and founder of Mayapada Group (one of the biggest business entities in Indonesia), told her to work for herself and not be dependent despite the privilege she had.

Grace spent some of her adult life helping with the family business at Mayapada Hospital and Siloam Hospital. It was a very comfortable and routine working life. But she wanted more.

At 37 years old, Grace decided to start her own business and set up her own enterprise  – a Blackberry app called BibbyCam – with the support from her husband. Despite declining Blackberry popularity with the rise of the iPhone, the app had a good run.

“We had quite a number of followers and downloads, it was very popular among the Blackberry users we were featured on the Blackberry store. But then we didn’t know how to monetize,” Grace says.

But for Grace, the project opened a pandora box. She wanted to do something even more impactful. Because she had a background in healthcare, she felt a strong desire to contribute to the sector.

“I wanted to see Indonesian healthcare improving in terms of access and quality,” Grace says.

She then started two health-tech startups Dokter.id and Medico. Dokter.id is an education platform for the public, providing free consultation through chats and news. While Dokter.id caters to the public, Medico works with healthcare providers such as hospitals and clinics as part of its end-to-end solution.

Since founding these enterprises, Grace knew that she was meant to stay in the lane of healthcare and tech. “I believe healthcare is a really impactful business. With tech we can multiply much faster and much greater than if we just used traditional ways,” Grace says.

But even at the top, the wind of gender bias is still felt. It is not unusual for Grace to find herself being the only woman in the room.

“In any meeting rooms that I’ve been there’s always been more guys than girls, and systematically, if you encounter that kind of atmosphere, you always have that perception already that this is going to be male-run, or dominated by men,” Grace says.

But she does not let that atmosphere intimidate her. “There’s a lot of good men who don’t treat women with disrespect, and it’s not my job to educate those males who disrespect women,” she says. 


Grace has taught her three daughters from a young age that one day they will have to work for themselves and for their families, and that that work has to make them happy.

When it comes to providing capital for other businesses, Grace prioritizes those that can be strategically aligned with Mayapada Group and its stream of healthcare startups. Grace has invested in printing, software, and HR businesses, among others.

Grace also has an eye for impact. As an angel investor, Grace looks for social enterprises that can generate the widest impact possible.

Her GLI approach focuses on investing in female-founded businesses. Grace has provided capital to female-founded social startups helping small and medium enterprises in Indonesia. 


Knowing the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs, Grace admits that she always has a sense of affinity with women founders.

“There’s a tendency to accept pitch decks from these female founders, and there’s an increasing number of them,” Grace says. 


Beyond her own ventures, Grace also mentors young female entrepreneurs at a Christian-based mentorship program. 


For Grace, the future of GLI must be clearly defined in a roadmap. “There are a lot of soundbites that are very pleasant about investing for gender equality, but how do we do it in a practical way? What is the system?” Grace says.

Founder of EverHaus and Secondate Beauty

When she was only 22 year old, Gitta shattered stereotypes by founding her own venture capitalist firm. She is committed to empowering the millennial generation of Indonesian entrepreneurs. 

“I owe my business acumen to my two parents”, Gitta recalls. The daughter of two entrepreneurs, she had acquired her business sense almost as soon as she learnt how to speak. Whenever they went out together, restaurants, theme parks or cinemas, she had to guess how much money the institution made in one day and what it could do to improve the business. 

Gitta’s love of finance started when she realized how much capital flows affected the growth of different industries and steered innovation. It was for her, the catalyst for change. From that moment, she made it her mission to help her country’s development by attracting as much capital as possible into the Indonesian economy, leveraging a growing young generation of entrepreneurs. While in the US to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in finance, she launched a publication called Think Nusantara, directed at Indonesian students abroad to encourage them returning back home to drive Indonesia’s growth. It didn’t take her long to take the lead in doing that.  

In the early days of her senior year, she went to her counselor’s office and announced that she wanted to graduate early. She bought a one way ticket to Singapore – the VC hub at the time – and for several weeks, networked her way around the region, visiting all possible Investment conferences and startup meetups. Gitta was determined to pursue her goal and worked on a first pipeline of curated tech businesses, pitching the idea of building a new fund. “Most people thought I was crazy, but some believed in me. They became my first sponsors and in many ways, my first mentors”. And  they did well to do so. One year later, her VC firm EverHaus was ranked as the most active seed stage firm by deal count in Indonesia. 

“As a woman trying to raise capital, you are often faced with the question of how our family-life will impact our work down the line. Whenever I receive that question, I answer that I will have children one day and devote my heart to them as a proud mother. But so will my husband” Gitta firmly declares, convinced that the first barrier to women is “the one in their head”. To debunk this self-imposed wall and support businesses that truly caters to women’s needs, she made a shift in her investment strategy to focus on impact-driven consumer brands. It is an investment that also makes financial sense. Women make up 50% of the population and dictate more consumer and household purchasing decisions than men. Instead of investing directly into women entrepreneurs, she built a thesis around industries that women are more naturally drawn to. As a result, she works with more female entrepreneurs. Her latest achievement was the release of her own beauty brand – Secondate Beauty, that evangelizes the idea that beauty comes from self-confidence. “It’s a message that struck a chord in many girls in Indonesia. The girls who were told they couldn’t, the girls who were told they shouldn’t and the girls who don’t believe in themselves”. 

Gitta is not the kind of person to wait for things to start materializing. She believes that a fast,  global shift has to come from the top down. She already has a blueprint in mind to bring more capital towards women’s needs: a multi-generational women-led fund, geographically constrained but not limited to enterprises of a specific size, to maximise the local network effect and support mentor-mentee relationships.