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Name:
Martina Marganingsih

Age:
24

Country:
Holland

Job:
Project Manager

Martina Marganingsih

A Global Career Currency, When Cultures Are Worlds Apart

At just 24, Martina Marganingsih is a Project Manager in Indonesia, having grown up in The Netherlands. She has had to adapt to cultural differences, but one of the key constants has been the Cisco technology that she uses, and the Networking Academy skills she has gained.

Cultural Issues

Martina left Indonesia for The Netherlands aged just five. Returning 19 years later, she was in for a culture shock. "I needed to adapt to certain challenges, especially when it comes to dealing with the tropical weather, the traffic and the food," she explains. Day-to-day bureaucracy also took some getting used to, as she "needed to be patient when waiting in line for administrative paper work." One area that caused Martina more problems than red tape was the lack of women in the Indonesian ICT industry - and the conservative attitudes of some of the men who work within it. As she says herself, "The biggest challenge is being a woman that works in a male-dominated professional world."

Networking Academy Advantage

The biggest factors in Martina's favour in dealing with the challenges of working in Indonesian ICT were and are the skills and qualifications she gained whilst at college - and at her Networking Academy. She was attending the Hogeschool in Amsterdam when she began a four-year period of study at the institution's Networking Academy, as part of her ICT course. "It was tough," she admits. "And there were non-technological hurdles to be overcome, including the fact that the course was in English." 'Soft' skills Martina learned were also to prove invaluable, such as communication and teamworking. By the time she had mastered all the courses' requirements, Martina had passed her CCNA, CCDA and CCVP, and was ready to flex her ICT muscles. Later, whilst on work placement, she found that her Network Academy training set her apart from her contemporaries.

Next Stop, Project Management

Once back in Indonesia, Martina tried her hand as a pre-sales engineer with a Cisco partner, but quickly switched to project management. Equipped with her qualifications and experience, Martina found work easily in Jakarta, and feels she owes much of her success to the programme. "It has helped me in providing a technical background knowledge of the equipment itself: how it functions, what the product is for, the dependencies of the project, how long and how complex to configure the equipment, and so on. In short, Cisco knowledge allows me to understand what my team is doing inside a project."

Outstanding Challenges

But it is the non-technical skills of communication and teamwork - also learned in the Networking Academy programme - that Martina is now increasingly relying on to make her way in an environment where a woman's opinion can sometimes be brushed aside. "You need to be firm and clear when talking to colleagues and in the way you treat them professionally," she counsels. "Have supporting data before making your point and don't be emotional. Keep a clear head and think for long term."

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