On March 9, 2012, Indonesia Mengglobal published its first article. We had a humble start at that time, but we had a lofty dream. Founded by Indonesian students who were based at Stanford University, California, our vision is to become a platform to inform, inspire, and ultimately empower other Indonesians who are curious about global education.
When an Indonesian left the familiar comforts of her home to pursue education overseas, she will return with hopefully, more to offer to Indonesia. This becomes increasingly relevant especially within the last two decades, during which modernization and globalization have rendered our world borderless. As a global citizen, our love for our country or sense of nationalism should ideally be evaluated from an informed, and not from a parochial, point of view. We could achieve this state of mind by opening ourselves to other countries and cultures’ traits and preferences. Importantly, being a global citizen means we could then look at Indonesia even more meaningfully, and not take for granted the lessons offered through our nation’s rich history and multi pluralistic societies.
As we reflect on our journey, we are grateful to share some of these milestones with our readers:
- 2012: published our first blog post
- 2012: held our first offline talk about studying in the US together with Indonesian Club at Stanford
- 2013: welcomed the first batch of team members with Content Director, Campus Representative, and Social Media Manager positions
- 2013: officially inaugurated our online forum
- 2013: launched annual mentorship program
- 2013: held the first annual Studying in the USA seminar in conjunction with Education USA and the US Embassy
- 2014: welcomed the addition of Events & Partnership and Technical divisions and Editor-in-Chief position in the 2014 team
- 2014: annual mentorship program started to be enhanced with scholarship offering for selected mentors
- 2015: enhanced article offering with the inauguration of tenured Columnist position within Editorial division
- 2015: reached more than 1 million page views annually
- 2017: launched Analytics division as an internal consultancy service. This division will be the first truly interdisciplinary division at IM, drawing the expertise of multiple divisions at IM at once. With this new division, our readers can look forward to having a better experience on using our services through insightful, data-driven decisions that increase the value of our extensive article offerings. Team members benefit from monthly insights derived from various analyses, which will be able to positively influence the decision-making processes in the team.
- 2017: increased our social media presence through presence on Instagram and various new initiatives on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube
For this month, though, we hope you enjoy our exclusively curated Indonesian Women Going Global picks, featuring Indonesians who defy the odds and embody the vision of Indonesia Mengglobal.
With our anniversary only a day apart from the International Women’s Day, and believing wholeheartedly about the role women play in the nation’s development, we are keen to see more women leaders from Indonesia on a global scale!
Continuing beyond our five years of service, we hope to bring many of our team members and readers’ ideas into fruition. These range from having more offline events (the No. 1 request based on our Twitter survey!), tweaking the web site, publishing more articles for a mature audience (e.g. Ph.D. candidates with family), to covering more regions such as Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
With more than 800 articles, 30,000 subscribers, and exciting programs in our pipeline, our family is growing and we would love to welcome more thoughts from you!