Yoga Adiwinarto

I am a Country Director for Indonesia at the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy (ITDP). In ITDP, I serve multiple roles as advocates for sustainable transport, where I push the leader in city government, national government and sometimes politicians, to bring the sustainable transportation agenda forward. But at the same time, I also have to develop a technical plan and design, mostly about improvement plans in the area of Bus Rapid Transit, Non-Motorized Transport and Transit-oriented Development. It is an exciting job where you can actually see your ideas, plans and designs are implemented by the government, and I get to use it on daily basis, such as the BRT system in Jakarta. 

1 year in ITS really helped me broaden my view about sustainable transport. But it also helped to widen my connections with many professionals. Even though I am based in Jakarta, I am also doing work in other countries such as Pakistan, Azerbaijan, East Timor and Lao PDR, and surprisingly in most of the cities I visited, I found many people who have also studied at ITS Leeds, which is very exciting.  And it helped us to be closer in doing the work. 

ITS is very well-known organization amongst transport professionals in Indonesia. So when I decided that I wanted to pursue a career in the transport sector, I did not look at any other school and chose ITS directly.  

For International students, it might be a little bit challenging at the beginning to adjust many things, such as learning about both the principle of sustainable transport systems, UK Transport Policy, and the Yorkshire accent that you face on daily life. But no need to worry as after a while, you will get used to it. A career in transport is very exciting and challenging. There are many aspects related to transport such as economy, regional development, climate change and even politics. You can choose many roles that you would like to play in transport, but you really need to have a strong passion for it to become successful. 

There are so many career highlights, but speaking to leaders, such as governor or minister to present your ideas and plan to improve transport condition has been very memorable, especially after your ideas were approved for implementation. 

ITS is one of the few schools where students received assistance applying for jobs. 

There are more than 180 countries worldwide, and many of them still have basic or lack of good transport facility. Your help is needed to make sure many people across the world can have good access to transportation. Don’t focus only on your country, broaden your impact worldwide.