From Intern to CEO in Less than a Decade

How did Ardelia Apti transition from being an intern at Mapan to becoming its CEO, in less than a decade?

In this episode, we delve into Ardelia’s career journey – from starting as an intern at Mapan while still in college to becoming the CEO, Ardelia shares her path through McKinsey, GoJek, and GoPay, highlighting her passion for social enterprise and fintech. Facing challenges of confidence and defining success, Ardelia emphasizes the importance of self-awareness, mentorship, and visualisation in achieving inner peace and success.

Tune in to discover how Ardelia is empowering women through innovative financial solutions, creating opportunities for collective growth and stability in communities!

Discussion Topics: From Intern to CEO in Less than a Decade

• Introduction and Background of Ardelia Apti, CEO of Mapan.
• Ardelia’s Journey to CEO – Starting as an intern at Mapan, transitioning to McKinsey, then joining Gojek, and eventually returning to Mapan as CEO.
• Challenges Faced in Career Growth – Challenges related to confidence and defining success, highlighting the importance of self-awareness and setting micro-successes.
• Confidence Issues – Strategies for overcoming confidence issues, including over-preparation, seeking feedback, and building relationships with mentors and peers.
• Insights for Emerging Women Leaders – Emphasizing self-awareness, visualization, manifestation, and the value of male allies.
• Defining Success – Ardelia shares her personal definition of success, focusing on achieving inner peace and alignment with her true self.
• Advice to Younger Self – Emphasizing the importance of being kinder and more accepting of the journey.
• Overview of Mapan – Ardelia provides an overview of Mapan, explaining its focus on empowering women through community rotating savings models and women-led initiatives.
• Wrapping up

Transcript: From Intern to CEO in Less than a Decade

Ritu G. Mehrish: Hi Ardelia. Welcome to  Rewrite The Rules podcast and, I’m really looking forward to our conversation today. And before we get started, just a quick. Intro of you for our listeners. AJ is the CEO of mappin, a company focused on women empowerment through new income, opportunity and financial access. So once again, welcome to the show.

Ardelia Apti: Thank you so much, Ritu, and thank you so much for having me. Super excited to talk to you as well.

Ritu G. Mehrish: Perfect. So walk us through your journey so far. How did you end up becoming the CEO of Marin?

Ardelia Apti: It’s been a long journey. I actually was an intern at Mopan, when I was at my last year of college. so I think that was 2014. so that was the early days of Mopan. For me, it feels like a lifetime, but I guess not that far back, so in my last year of college I found out about Mount Pan through, leadership workshop, Aldi Hario promo, who was, the founder was speaking there and at that time there was no such thing as tech startups, and social enterprise and such.

And I was really intrigued, by the concept of social enterprise, first and foremost, how you can. Deliver impact to people, that are probably less affluent, and still make money, off the back of doing the business. And also the concept of technology, used to empower people in general.

So I joined as an intern first at mopan, but at that time, I already signed, with McKinsey, as a management consultant. So at the end of my three months with pon, I joined McKinsey. I always thought that, My McKinsey journey was like a little bit of a crash course of what it would feel like to work with a multinational company with the global standards, understanding business acumens, that is probably not so much part of, what we are taught at school here, right?

And then, I was, reached out by, the management team of Gojek at that time. And so that was how I first really got into tech startup as my permanent job. in 2016. It was, its early days, I think, the app was just launched, et cetera. And so I spent five years, I think, in the Gojek group first I started the driver benefits program and in my second year, I actually transitioned to GoPay, which was the FinTech arm of, Gojek. After that, I did a stint as a country director for Element, which was an AI company focusing on biometric solution, and I got the call to rejoin my pan.

I think I might made that decision probably within a few days. I was really excited cuz I think at that time I felt like throughout my journey, what I’ve accumulated right and where I was in my life, it just felt very full circle. I think being asked to be the CEO was definitely a stretch and a leap, for me but I felt very at home to make that leap.

Ritu G. Mehrish: Wow. So there are a couple of threads as you told me that. So there is the startup thread. Then there is a Social enterprise thread, because also in Gojek you said you worked on the incentives of the drivers and providing them financial access. And then of course there’s Marin. Was there always an interest or did you develop it along the way?

Ardelia Apti: I definitely developed it along the way, so I’ve never had a specialty, all my life. I felt like I’m always like a generalist and so I did not know right away what I wanted to do, out of college, right? I think even choosing what major I should take at college, I left it mostly to my parents. And I think entering McKinsey was my way to learn as much as possible off the options, right?

Because we get to work with projects of various types of business, industries, functions, et cetera. But even so I did, I would never thought that my decision would end up being joining Gojek, like the startup company at that time, because it was not even in the vocabulary of what we were working as a management consultant.

But I think what I’ve developed along the way, it is less so about the topics. It is less so about the function, I think. For me, I’m so lucky to be able to try something and then like it so much that I end up specializing in it, right? Like the FinTech and social enterprise, space. But in, in the back of my decisions was always, which role do I think can catapult like my potential more?

And it had a lot to do with who were my leaders at that time, who were the team that I got to lead. and what was the company’s mission about? Is it something that excites me? I do think it comes down to personality and culture fit the most, compared to the other kind of like more tangible things. And so that was what I was basing my decision on.

Ritu G. Mehrish: Great. thank you for sharing your journey once again because I think it is pretty impressive because, you said you joined straight out of college and now you’re the CEO of the company. So it’s obviously been, a very fascinating and a very fast track journey you joined McKinsey, which is very different from multinational. Talk to me a little bit about the culture or the changes, the learnings, the challenges that, that you faced and you overcame. While you were there, talk to me a little bit about those two years there.

Ardelia Apti: Oh wow. It was definitely a huge culture shock. I definitely did not speak as good English as I do now it made me really like shy and not confident, in what I’m capable of, during that time. Cuz even in communicating it was already like such a task.

Even before we get to the content and everything. But I love the culture of McKinsey and I think it actually ended up to be what shaped me because at that time, they had a special track, for people who graduated from, the local universities. It gives you a path where people understand like where you’re coming from, your contacts and what you need to work on more and give you a little bit more time and leeway to adapt and adjust.

And so that really helped and I think another thing worth mentioning was, I think I learned mentorship, like real mentorship the first time from McKinsey we have managers for our projects. We have our personal mentorship, but I’ve never felt like someone cared. So much about me, I think in a professional context, right?

And it, it is not just about caring at and attention, but really putting the effort to get to a detailed understanding of what are my strengths and what are my weakness. And really putting the time to build a path to like work on them and it was very methodical. They have a very structured mentorship. So I think those two things really shaped my confidence and how I ended up absorbing, all the learnings, from my two years there.

Ritu G. Mehrish: Thanks. Sometimes, especially in Asia, because of the cultural context, English not being the first language for most of us especially with women that can come as a barrier, language and that makes us shy and therefore we don’t put our hand up for initiative and therefore when we don’t build visibility and things like that, right? so I’m glad you shared how it taught you, how you overcame that and that’s what we want our emerging women leaders to understand that language is not a barrier.

We can quickly learn and again, work it and make it work to our advantage. So thank you so much for sharing that. I want to double click a little bit on, on mentorship you said this, that was the best mentorship you’d ever seen experienced. How much of that are you today as a CEO of Marin? Carrying into the company’s culture.

Ardelia Apti: Oh, wow. I always say mentorship is probably the number one factor that got me to where I am today along my journey. So it’s also something that I hold very dearly in terms of putting in my company’s, values. And the way that we run the company, I think at the baseline of mentorship is basically seeing people as like a whole human being versus like a worker, right?

So it’s less so about oh, these people can do modeling or, and this person can do good PowerPoints, But I think the context of building those natural characters, foundations and values out of people is so much about like who you are as a whole human, your background, your context versus like where you are at work, right?

For us to be able to have that openness to talk about. I’m never really gonna be really great at this part, but I’m probably gonna be really great at this part. Which I think is also that strength based learning is something that I hold really dearly, And so that’s also the second part I think, of the mentorship. Where you also choose areas where you think you can excel, right? and really hone in on that. And I think as a women leader, I think that’s one of the things that built my own confidence, when doing that. Cuz as I’m going through it with my mentor, but as I’m mentoring other people as well, it makes me feel more normal in my own journey as well.

Because You can be compassionate to others. Why can’t you be compassionate in mentoring yourself? And so I think that’s like the third part of the mentorship, values that I try to bring to the company as well.

Ritu G. Mehrish: Nice. I’m gonna shift gears a little bit. Talk to me a little bit about, some of the challenges that in your journey you saw, what were the top one or two challenges that you faced in these last 10 years?

Ardelia Apti: Definitely confidence. I think that’s one, first and foremost, and I think probably true to most women. I never thought that it was external to me it was purely internal. And I think some people thought it’s external. cuz what, that’s what you end up projecting and it’s easier for you to follow it. But most of it I realize is your internal narrative of whether you are the woman that you expect yourself. To be or whether you believe that you are the woman who deserves a place in this room.

I think, I still remember one of my managers, early in my days, used to say that you’re really capable. The only difference that will make between you doing task versus you leading stuff is your ownership. it’s you owning your capability, your role in something, and that’s, that is purely confidence, right?

And so I think In building that own narrative in my head, that was, I think, the toughest, right? and think as you become a woman leader more and more, you feel that there’s a smaller percentage of women in the room, As you go higher and higher up and so even today, I think it’s still, a continuous.

Struggle for me, to work on. And I think the second part is really about defining success, but it’s not about defining success in the long term. For me, it’s not about what do you wanna be in five years, 10 years? I’ve never asked myself that, by the way. But it’s more like, how do you define success right now, right day to day, who you wanna become at work is success winning an argument at a meeting? Or is success like building peace in the long term and relationships like these type of trade offs of defining the micro successes that will lead to the larger success? so I think those two are the areas of challenges for me.

Ritu G. Mehrish: This is so interesting and so relevant. The confidence piece and you articulated it so well saying there’s external and internal, and a lot of time the external is driven by our internal narrative and I can say from my own experience, and I have been working for last, what, 25? So I’m like really old in front of you but it’s, it is something that even now, once in a while, I have to tell myself. So how do you overcome that?

Ardelia Apti: I think definitely still struggle with that to today, and I don’t think we will ever stop, Because it’s like how we are geared. but some of the things, I think it’s different throughout my journeys. In the early days, I really focus on my content. I really wanna be good at this.

So over preparation was the biggest thing that drove my confidence, I think, in my early years. I felt like I’m over-prepared. There is nothing I cannot answer, et cetera, et cetera. And then I got to like a middle management type of role. And I think the confidence there had so much more to do with your relationship with your peers, right? Rather than delivering your own individual contribution, plus your relationship with your team, For someone who’s very, like in their feelings like me, like I think a lot about like my team and how I am to them. So that was like a big challenge as well. And I think th in this part, like self-awareness and brutal honesty about like your context, your strength, your weakness, and really what you are thinking of at that time was really powerful to me.

for example, you come into a meeting and you feel like, oh my God, I was so blabbering so much, I’m not getting my point across, et cetera. A lot of these internal narratives, I think typically people don’t ask each other to validate that because they’re embarrassed.

And I think I started ask my peer or my team, et cetera, What was I, delivering at that meeting? Was it good? Was it not good? Did you get the message, et cetera. It’s how I knew that 90% of my thoughts were just my thoughts and like I most, most of them are actually not reality.

So choosing those allies where you can be like really honest and feel really safe to validate your inner narratives was really helpful.

I started just like saying how I’m feeling, how I’m not confident, and it builds that level of honesty as well from my team to me. And so we are just always in the know of what are the challenges of every team member. No. As a ceo, I guess more of the challenge is going to come from pitching to investors, et cetera.

which is something that is completely different. I don’t think like you can ever train yourself to do it. but I think the way that I try to overcome it is, I feel like I’ve gone full circle and come back to over preparation. and that could mean practicing with other people, to like really hone in your pitch, et cetera.

and so that has actually really helped me again now, right? But at the bottom line of it, I think throughout the journey is just to never be afraid of feedback. is really how I built my confidence.

Ritu G. Mehrish: Wow. Wow. Yeah. I think you said such great things. I love the fact that you distributed in three parts, starting your career over preparing. Then when you get to a middle management, then there’s relying on relationships, your team, your people, and now, as a seasoned leader in your case as a ceo, you’ve gone back to like over preparing. So sometimes we need to do that, sometimes we need to rely on relationships. So it’s a combination and and the feedback.

Yeah. Great. Great. What do you see Adalia, in your world, women leaders especially emerging women leaders struggling the most with, or things that you say, gosh, I wish I could tell them this and this could help them.

what do you see as their challenges?

Ardelia Apti: Yeah. I think number one is definitely, you have to build that self-awareness. like mindfulness where you are, why am I here, why did I choose this job, right? And what am I lacking from this job? What am I getting from this job? And how do I get to the next steps?

These are like incredibly difficult questions to ask yourself. I do think this part is really important and I really feel really lucky to have been around people and workspace.

That has taught this right about self-awareness, et cetera. And it doesn’t stop only by acknowledging, oh, this is my strength, this is my weakness, but what is under that? the iceberg theory, like why are you behaving that way? what context, maybe 10 years back maybe in your childhood, maybe something really random that makes you behave a certain way and becomes a blocker for you, or becomes a moment of strength for you.

And coming up to the second thing, which is I think, visualization manifestation, I do think it’s really important to manifest. I think one of the most powerful sessions, that I had in one of, the trainings done by McKinsey was visualize where you feel that you were at your best. I never got asked that. And I never thought to myself, what do I look like when I was at my best? what are the behaviors that I project, right? and what was about that situation? That was very supporting to me, the, to be that person and to be my best self.

I try to imagine that. Always in a very difficult situation, what would be the best exit here? Rather than trying to like figure out little by little how you. solve the small issues, but at the grand scheme of things, what would be the best outcome?

And I, I don’t think we pause enough to ask that, not only in work situation, but our life in general, when choosing a career, what would the best career, like best next job look like, right? And so I think taking those process to ask yourself that is really important. and I think the third thing that I believe that some of the most important people in my life that made me a woman leader today is the men in my life. I have some amazing men mentors, right? And I never shy myself away from actually rallying these men mentors as well As well as men, peers, team members, et cetera.

And I do think it, it, when you surround yourself with the right men, you validate your confidence as a woman so much. It’s actually to make you understand that contrast is acceptable and someone is okay with the contrasts that you’ve built. And so I do really feel that it’s such a powerful thing if I reflect back, how I’ve, tried to bring that contrast in. But of course, by the, the right people.

Yeah. not, I think not only just. Any person, right? Men or women, but like the right people who can come in and really bring in a contrasting perceptive to you that you feel that, okay, this contrast is acceptable. I am confident with this contrast and how I differ. Yeah.

Ritu G. Mehrish: Yeah. Yeah, no, that, that is a great point. I like the fact that you talked about the male allies, because sometimes that is, I have seen women leaders being reluctant to reach out to their male counterparts, either to mentor them or even as they allies. But I also know that in this journey of, women leaders coming more and staying more and more in workforce, male allies or male leaders play such a big role.

so I’m glad you brought that up. I know you did say that you define success more by, by as of today, but if I were to ask you a little bit, taking a long term view, how do you define success by yourself? Adalia, what does success mean to you?

Ardelia Apti: yeah. So this will sound like a little bit personal, but I think my life goal is to reach inner peace. and so my career, anything that I work on in this life, I crave the feeling of peace internally, It’s a difficult feeling to achieve for women overachievers, I feel.

and so I’m always trying to optimize that by aligning myself more and more to who I truly am at heart, right? This was one of my biggest challenge, right? Different defining my success even day to day.

And so everything that I choose on the way there is things that will make me feel more and more aligned, making me feel more and more at peace. and yeah, I really believe that I will be a very successful person when I can maintain my own inner peace. Cuz I believe I can project that tenfold to, Other people, right?

Yeah.

Ritu G. Mehrish: Okay. I know you’re very young even now, but I’ll still ask the question. If you were to look back at your younger self, would there be any advice to a young, a younger art.

Ardelia Apti: to me, I think definitely to my younger self, what I would say is, To be kinder to myself is, I think the number one things I think I wanted so much, so fast and was so critical to myself, right? I think I was just less accepting of the process that I need to take, to get there, I can’t.

Just always be, the best person in the room, the smartest person in the room. I have no issue with the outcome, but. In the process. I think so much about the inner peace part and who I am internally personally compared to my outcome in my career would’ve, been way smoother and way better.

Ritu G. Mehrish: Yeah. what you said is correct cuz I’ve asked this question to so many women leaders and almost in, in some shape or form in some words or the other people have just said this, be kinder, be more appreciative, be more accepting. So you’re right. Yeah. Delia, I’ve really enjoyed our conversation and we can go on and on.

I do wanna take this opportunity for you to share a little bit more about, about Marin. What does Marin do? because again, I just think it’s so pertinent to the topic. We are talking about women leaders. so go ahead and tell us a little bit about the company.

Ardelia Apti: Yeah, so MAP Plan is a company that focuses on how we can empower, women at, especially at the bottom of the pyramid, the mid to low income economic, bracket to basically. Attain the things that they need to upgrade their livelihood. So maan means financial stability, in Bahasa. So that’s basically like the core thesis.

The business model that we use, is a community rotating savings model called aan, which is very much ingrained in the Indonesian social activities. and so we’ve taken that, we digitized that and we’ve. Change the purpose of that to like doing a collective saving together to afford household items that you need in your house.

We create groups of women who has women leaders. in this case they become our agents, quote unquote, who organizes the aan, and become our on online to offline, like bridge, to more and more women. And so this women also get, a commission so that they also get an income, for their family, et cetera.

So it’s really like how we can benefit the influencers, right? The women leaders within. Any micro community, they are, to basically spread this collective growth message, to the collective saving model. and gain something by doing that right. But also giving more access to more women around her to basically be able to upgrade their livelihood

Ritu G. Mehrish: Wow. so good. So thank you so much for sharing that, and as we wrap up our conversation, I mean there’s so much I took away, but few, three things actually that stood out for me that you talked about is, One is the whole confidence piece about external versus internal and how it’s our narrative and how as women leaders, we can all, change our narrative through, one of the things you talked about is through getting feedback, brutal feedback.

And for that you need to have the right set of people, around you. So build those relationships early on. The second piece that stood out for me, In our conversation was mentorship, the importance of mentorship and the role that mentorship played in your career it’s a tool that’s available to all of us, but we need to reach out, to really maximize its benefit.

The third piece I liked about, the whole thing, how you go switching from, role to role in what you do to prepare your confidence. And, and I love the fact that you said, you over prepare sometimes you rely on, making sure you just have the right relationships.

But again, you can go back to, over preparing and over practicing. so those are really tools. for women leaders to build their confidence. That’s one of the practices. and of course, I loved your philosophy about inner peace, and, how do you define success? It was such a pleasure talking to Adela is I’m sure our listeners are gonna get a lot from you.

Once again, congratulations and all the best for everything you’re doing.

Ardelia Apti: Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me.

Ritu G. Mehrish: It’s a pleasure.

Our Guest: Ardelia Apti

Ardelia Apti is an experienced business leader of Indonesian tech companies/start-ups, currently serving as CEO of Mapan, a company focusing on women empowerment and improving the lives of the lower-end segment through new income opportunities and financial access.