MY JOURNEY

Isyana Adriani was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, on May 14, 1983. From an early age, she has developed a love for books. Long before Indonesia had bilingual national schools, as a teenager Isyana would drown herself in books, signing up for the British Council library membership which enabled her to get acquainted with the works of Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens and their contemporaries.

In 2001, as she graduated from high school, as easily predicted by her peers Isyana enrolled in the English Language Associate’s Degree (D3) program at The University of Indonesia (UI.) She graduated in 2004 and a year later, taking her love for English one step further, she started a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature at The University of Auckland, New Zealand. Halfway through her studies, driven by her curiosity about how the media spun propaganda, Isyana took Films, Television and Media Studies (FTVMS) as a second major – also at The University of Auckland.

Upon graduation in 2008, Isyana returned to Indonesia and started working for a Japanese consulting company. Soon, she figured out that corporate world was not her cup of tea and moved to have her first taste of full-time teaching at Lessons for Life, an English course center located in Central Jakarta. It was at this point that Isyana was intrigued about joining the foreign service that she decided to go back to school. She returned to UI and enrolled in a Master of Science program in Terrorism Studies.

Isyana was offered to teach in the International Relations Study Program (IRSP) at President University before she even graduated. It was April 2012 and she was working on her postgraduate thesis when the opportunity came knocking on her door. After a long reluctance, Isyana agreed to have an interview with President University in late October 2012. In December of the same year she signed a contract with President University.

The rest, as they say, is history.