Staff Spotlight: Fenny Ayu Wilriani

Fenny is from a small village in south Sumatra, Indonesia. She moved to Ubud in Bali for the first time in 2010 to work for the Bali Spirit Festival. Fenny then worked at the famous Green School as a project administrator for their Green Farm project. Before that, she was a preschool teacher in Bali and West Java. She’s also lived and studied in Europe.

My favorite travel memory was traveling to Iran in 2017. I didn’t have the chance to visit as many historical sites as I would have liked to during my short stay. Yet it was an incredible journey as I’ve always been fascinated by Middle East history, culture, custom, and most importantly, food.

Iran is fascinating. It has been the centre of many different civilizations, such as the Kassites, Mannaeans, Gutians and, of course, the historical conquests of adjacent regions led by the Persians have made Iran a multi-ethnic and multicultural country.

I spend the majority of my time working from some of Bali’s best known co-working and co-living spaces and I have close relationships with the spaces and startups that work in the spaces.

As part of my role for Start Me Up, I spend a lot of time getting to know what startups and local social enterprises need help with in terms of marketing and business development. Working with Start Me Up has helped me develop cross-cultural awareness and I love it when international collaborations promote innovation between international interns and startups from all over the world.

I’m particularly proud of Josh, a former Start Me Up intern who was so inspired by his time in Bali that he decided to launch his own fitness and health coaching business. The other one is from Isabella, She's a hard working intern who focuses on her work helping an artist from UK on her art project supporting women suffrage movement.

So far, I’ve only experienced our Bali program, which is our biggest program. We encourage students to develop their skill-set and mindset by focusing on learning by doing. Bali is like nowhere else in the world. It’s a unique startup ecosystem of entrepreneurs and innovators from all over the world. The feedback we’ve had from past interns is great.

Our Company is unique because we are the first travel and education program to organize structured remote startup internships that combine world class work experience with travel to the world’s most popular ‘digital nomad’ destinations, like Bali.

I’m proud to be part of a hard working team that helps junior talent from the world’s best universities to connect and help startups and social enterprises scale quickly and cost-effectively.

Great teamwork is the most important factor for growing a successful company. Good communication is key, so is sharing ideas and opinions with the team members, understanding shared goals and being committed to attaining them. If we're committed with those factors, I believe that success will inevitably follow.