Lydia Setiawan

Career Isn't Always About Performance, But Also Interpersonal Skills Sharpened at UPH

It all began as Lydia, UPH’s Accounting Alumni cohort 2010 received an opportunity of Scholarship Grantee, Outstanding Freshman of the Year di UPH Award as well as becoming the youngest Resident Assistant at UPH Dormitory that she stepped into her career as an Auditor at one of the big four public accountant, Deloitte. Working as an auditor, Lydia is encouraged to work with good time management in regards to tight deadline and multiple pipelines. At Deloitte, she works with the top-level management and Japanese companies as her client. But aside of Deloitte, she is now entrusted to participate in an activity which has a huge social impact at one of Indonesia’s very own decacorn startup company, GoJek as an analyst.

“At Gojek I worked with a multicultural environment that has highly helped me to further sharpen my perspective, problem solving, and interacting with people of different culture, background, and experience,” says Lydia as she retells her story of how she arrived at the place she is now.

As a technology-based service, Gojek has not only been an on-demand multi service platform and digital payment technology, but also a lifestyle for Indonesians. With the presence of Gojek, Indonesians with high mobility and packed schedule can maximize the use of their time. Every solution Lydia and her team comes up with at Gojek inevitably will have an impact on the society. Take new innovations Gojek placed as an example – these decisions will fill the gap between the two ends of low supply and high demand.

At Gojek, Lydia once juggled between being an Analyst, a Marketing Strategist and an Auditor that manages to launch and promote a new business unit starting off with 0 transaction to ~6k transaction with a IDR 300 million equivalent income all done in only 1,5 months. But wait – it doesn't stop there. As an Analyst, Lydia also succeeded in implementing the exact pricing strategy through a keen customer demand analysis that resulted in the increase ~4x the transaction for 3 months after the brand launched. Meanwhile at the Marketing Strategist front, Lydia succeeded in implementing multiple channels marketing strategy, one in which resulted in increasing user growth as much as ~3.5x within the 3 months of brand launching. Last but not least, in her Auditor shoes, she was able to increase time efficiency up tp ~40% as well as cost saving as much as ~20% that results in the increase of business improvement processes and a turn-around plan.

Lydia admits that she uses the opportunity she’s had during college to increase her interpersonal skills and establishes a strong network. “Adopting Harvard Business School’s study planning, UPH helped me to sharpen my thinking process and prepare me to become a transformational leader. My hope for UPH is that my alma mater keeps on giving holistic education and thus producing graduates that is not only inspiring but also giving positive impact for their surroundings,” she closes.