I started to get interested in computer things when I was in high school. At that time, I had a computer lab course at my school. That was the first time I touched a keyboard and saw a moving-blinking cursor on black-flat screen in front of me. It was very exciting. I felt that I have found a new world and surely will be the future of human being in it. After I had finished my high school, I decided to continue my undergraduate study in the Computer Science department of Gadjah Mada University, one of the best universities in Indonesia. Its excellent courses, faculty and learning environment have given me a firm grounding in all the fields of Computer Science. Now I am a student of the INTO Mason Graduate Pathway program. I am taking this program because I still need to improve my English skills and learn to adapt with American academic culture.
After I earned my bachelor degree, I joined PT Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI), the most profitable bank and the largest banks in Indonesia that specializes in Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME). I was one among thousands of applicants for its IT staff specialist program. In accordance with the development of technology, business needs and operational improvement, BRI decided to exchange its core-banking system from a distributed-offline system to a centralized and real-time one. Hence, my next job was to create a program to maintain, prepare and convert data from the current core-banking system to the new one. The most crucial step was the data migration process. As the coordinator of the implementation team, I had to monitor all the field engineers that perform the migration process, ensuring that they follow all the standard operating procedures that I have defined. The migration also had to finish according to a very strict schedule. It took eight years to make ‘online’ more than 4,300 micro businesses units all over Indonesia, from cities to rural areas and even isolated islands, of which Indonesia has approximately 17,504 islands. The success of the project made BRI became the first bank in Indonesia, which provide banking services in real-online for all people, especially for people in remote areas. Likewise, this valuable experience has deepened my passionate upon technology and computer science.
Working for the company for thirteen years, I have repeatedly proven my performance. I have received two awards as an employee with excellent achievement. I was also chosen as one of the participants for the company graduate scholarship program. After several tests and challenging interviews with various levels of executives all the way to the board of directors, I now have a chance to pursue my graduate degree overseas. Only a few employees were chosen to get the scholarship from hundreds of applicants. This program is specially designed for a very limited number of senior staff with the potential for top positions in the company. The ultimate goal of this program is to forge the future leadership at BRI, something that I aspire to be.
I believe that having the opportunity to study overseas, especially at one of the best universities in the U.S. such as George Mason University, is a great chance to develop my abilities and skills. Of the many fields in the Computer Science spectrum, I am especially interested in database and software engineering. It would be my honor to be able working with Prof. Amihai Motro and Daniel Menasce in their research or projects. I believe that the emphasis of graduate study on intensive and independent study of a specialized area is an ideal way of making a student capable of reaching the frontiers of knowledge in a subfield quickly and keeping abreast of the latest developments. Moreover, I am so excited about meeting new people from different countries and backgrounds. The school also offers cultural diversity, among other things, which are very important for me as it will broaden my horizon. With abundant experiences that I have, I can share those with other students too. I believe that it will benefit both other students and the school.
As the largest bank in Indonesia, BRI serves its customers through more than 10,000 outlets (division, main branch, sub branch, micro unit), 150,000 electronic outlets (ATMs, CDMs, EDCs) that spreads all over Indonesia. With the number of customers reached 55,7 million, the average number of banking transactions at BRI is approximately 12 million transactions per day. Regarding to those numbers, BRI absolutely needs an IT system that can manage big data and ultra fast real-time transaction system. Considering those needs, my passionate and future objectives, I decided to pursue graduate studies in Computer Science. I believe that with your courses, competent faculties and impressive research facilities will equip me to bring my company to achieve the organizational goals within the fast-paced, highly demanding business in the future. I am confident that joining at GMU can help me to incarnate my ambition as a professional in the computer science field and to pursue my career as one of the leaders at BRI while contributing to economic development in Indonesia because most of BRI’s customers are middle to lower income citizen.