Why I'm building technology for Indonesia's Ministry of Education after a year at Bain
First principles of my decision-making process and thoughts on how relentless alignment to values, habits, and passion-driven communities enable opportunities for both wealth creation and purpose.
I’ve never felt a deeper sense of conviction before towards a major life decision. Taking the leap of faith to leave Bain to join GovTech Education, a company designed to collaborate with the Indonesian Ministry of Education with large-scale technology initiatives as a founding Product Strategy and Operations Manager was a decision I battled with across the recruiting process, meeting / building mental models on career development from my mentors, leaders, and trusted friends along the journey, and most importantly repeatedly asking myself and reflecting deeply:
What environment or work empowers me to be my best self,
Where will the world be in 10+ years and where do I seek to contribute to its growth, and
What unique set of intrinsic passions, knowledge, and skillsets I bring to the table that allows me to make a differentiated impact in whatever role I take up.
The deep reflective process has allowed me space to think about both my own set of personal values as well as the “unique character” that I embody as a professional, person, and leader. As Naval put it so eloquently (https://nav.al/money-luck), the strongest form of success (in his case wealth creation, but generalizable) should to be to strive for “Level 4 Luck” — a position where you’ve created such a unique embodiment of your truest self, such that luck finds you. It’s a position in which no one else has the ability to replicate what you offer to the world. It’s where 99.9% of others have given up due to the difficulty, lack of interest, or lack of fulfillment from the pursuit of the journey. To get that to that position — one has to be willing to go all in. And so I asked myself and reflected across my life: “who am I, what am I committed to go all in for, and what foundational values do I stand for?”
Who am I? The first unique character that sparks in my mind is that I’m somebody who is able to and dedicate to and obsess over a singular vision and purpose over a long period of time — no matter the difficulty. In high school, I went from being the slowest runner on the Cross Country team (barely squeezing it below the cut-off tryout time of a 6:30 mile for the JV team my sophomore year) to being one of the top runners on the team my senior year, beating guys who were much faster than me or who started running way before me. It wasn’t talent; I was absolutely mediocre. But that first year running, I made a commitment to myself that I was going to give it my all and outwork everyone to reach my fullest potential. And that I did over the years ahead: running 100+ miles a week the summer before my senior year, prioritizing nutrition, optimizing my mental state, failing during races and training harder the next day. But this hunter mentality is also a double-edged sword. It means that when I’m pursuing a mission I align to and believe in — I’m unstoppable in the face of challenges and will drive through to the very end. I’ve learned through the grind that no one can outwork me. If I don’t hold that sense of mission— that edge is lost. Beyond athletics, I’ve felt this in professional aspects of my life, including recently at Bain. When I was staffed on projects aligned to my passions, nobody could outwork the drive and initiative I gave to solving problems. For instance, on cases on e-groceries and artificial intelligence, I spent my weekends taking my own time to learn as much as I could: listening to podcasts and reading analyst reports about the market, business models, and future trends. This extra-level of insight allowed me to add a ton of leverage to my team, as I took it on myself to “be the expert” and disseminate useful information and personally developed insights to the team. By nature, I’m not a passionate generalist (at least the way consulting needs me to be in terms of industries and in terms of being flexible wherever the “staffing winds” take you). I am someone that believes in driving my own narrative — in having the full ability to learn, grow, and be surrounded by people in the direction that I’ve defined for myself. I know deeply where my superpowers and passions are, and all I want to do is lean into that. It’s incredibly important for me that whatever I do is intentional, and that I’ve defined and articulated that intention such that it resonates and reverberates deeply within me.
My second unique characteristic is that I am deeply passionate and have spent the vast majority of my time for the past few years mentoring, teaching, and building communities, products, and programs that have the goal of empowering others to their fullest potential — especially in the pursuit of educational equity for underserved communities. It started off in high school, when beyond my own athletic endeavors in running, I dedicated my weekends to coaching middle-school runners with the intention of developing their passion for the sport. In the off-season, I invested time to learn about the training philosophies of the greats and wrote training regimens for our team given the lack of formal coaching support we had. When I graduated and the team after won Gold at regionals with a young team — many athletes who I coached since middle-school — it was an electrifying feeling.
In college, I focused most of my time to learn and contribute to breaking down the systemic roots of educational equity in America. I was on the ground: I spent 2-3 days a week volunteer tutoring Mathematics and English at nearby public schools, specifically working with immigrant students (many who came from Vietnam, China, Mexico). Oftentimes, it wasn’t only school that was difficult for these students — but many had anxiety from feeling like outcasts due to their accents or language barriers inhibiting them from speaking up for themselves. Sometimes they just missed home. And so it was my job to not only focus on building and teaching curriculum, but to also be a genuine support system for them (“call me anytime you need someone to talk to”). It was on the ground where I saw the direct need for more personalized student support but also the overwhelming need to build infrastructure to empower teachers (many of whom are overworked, underpaid, and under-supported). Educational work on the ground led me to diving deep into it on an institutional level — where I interned with Teach for America as an Accelerate Fellow, consulting non-profit and school systems in diverse regions (Los Angeles, New Orleans, Rio Grande Valley Texas), tackling problems such as non-profit fundraising, supporting undocumented immigrants, school-to-home educational interplay, the school-to-prison pipeline. Having both the ground-level experience and the more institutional, strategic vantage point allowed me to both deeply appreciate and understand that the problems that exist are deep, systemic ones that require long-term, infrastructural efforts to solve. And furthermore they are problems that require talent, policy, innovation, and grassroots understanding to come together. It was the initial push (which I’ll dive into later) that made me realize that this was a problem I wanted to commit to for the long-term in Indonesia.
My resounding drive for equity and lasting societal impact in education culminated in founding and running for the past two years Cornerstone Education — an Indonesian non-profit focused initially on building the best mentorship program, completely free of charge, specifically for Indonesian students whose families did not have financial privilege to afford expensive college counselors (most charge >$5K) for international higher education. We built our own curriculum covering the end-to-end of the college application process, trained volunteer mentors, and helped students apply for scholarships. After a year of operations and the realization that most students (especially in the midst of COVID) were not likely to go abroad and that it wasn’t a scalable, long-term solution to educational equity and empowering students to their fullest potential — we amplified our mission to focusing on building up infrastructures to empower Indonesian local students especially those coming from “non-target” backgrounds be able to land great jobs and succeed in their early careers. We focus on creating bottoms-up, foundational programs with curriculum ranging from excelling in the job search process (Dream Job Bootcamp) to building fundamental soft skills through project-based work (Early Talent Training Camp). Being a social entrepreneur in the education space in Indonesia has taught me to always ask “why” in order to understand root cause problems, and once understood, devise and build creative solutions to tackle them in a way no one else has. It’s taught me about working with an insanely diverse team — consisting of Indonesians I would have otherwise never met in the “bubble” of Indonesians who studied abroad and worked in business. And it’s taught me to be patient, to focus on impactful metrics that matter to our mission versus being satisfied with conventional metrics of growth.
My third unique characteristic was shaped being the son of a divorced family. I won’t go too much into detail here, but experiencing most of your childhood in in a crumbling family — witnessing it in direct and subtle ways — teaches you a sense of resilience, responsibility, honesty, and independence like no other. It’s taught me to care with all of my heart for the people around me, to live life with integrity and a relentless commitment to my values, and to partake and build environments that align to those values. I saw how capable good-hearted people were of doing terrible things as a byproduct of under-nurtured values and enabling environments. And a corollary of that is how great someone could be if they fully leaned into their beliefs and surrounded themselves with people that elevated them to be better people. As a result of my background, I’ve become someone who is able to be vulnerable, be open about my emotional weaknesses and insecurities as well as my story — and someone that is able to empower people to lean into themselves fully. I’ve become someone professionally who is capable and passionate about building great organizational culture and is unafraid to challenge the status quo if it does not empower people around to do great things.
My final unique characteristic is that I have the passion for deeply technical work. It’s something I noticed after being at Bain that immediately differentiates me from others — and a skillset I don’t want to leave to deteriorate. I grew up competing in Mathematics Olympiads, and studied Mathematics and Computer Science at Northwestern. I self-studied data science, and hustled my way to compete in national-level competitions: for instance making it to the finals of the NBA’s Business Analytics Hackathon. Although not part of my current professional career, I find immense joy in spending my free time understanding the mechanics of blockchain technology (taking Consensys’ Blockchain Development program), taking part-time classes in machine learning engineering and natural language processing, and building fun projects (an example is a Fake News classifier by leveraging Reddit’s API). I do all of this self-learning without pressure / stress, but I know that I have the capability and drive to do extremely well in a more technical role if I pursued it.
With a deep understanding of myself, what I was willing to commit to for the long-term, and what values mattered to me — I was able to form a powerful perspective on why taking up a Product Strategy and Operations role to contribute to building products for Indonesia’s Ministry of Education was the best decision I could make on first principles. Let’s tackle these one by one:
I. Choosing the hardest, most growth-filled path
Coming back to Indonesia after 15 years living abroad was a long-term commitment for me to fully commit to creating change within Indonesia’s education infrastructure. As explained in my story above, much of this drive came from observing the systemic inequity that existed in the US educational system and feeling a deep sense of mission to go home and work within communities that I had a differentiated ability (as an Indonesian who understood the dynamic of culture and systems here) to impact. I knew coming back that I had to be deeply entrenched on the ground-level — actually interacting with educational stakeholders such as students, teachers, and administrators on an extensive basis — and practice radical empathy on a daily basis. Because the truth is, I have to acknowledge that I’m Indonesian but did not grow up in the Indonesian educational system (living in Singapore) and lived most of my life in relative security and financial privilege allowing me to bypass an overwhelming amount of the challenges that the educational system faces. Beyond that, Indonesia’s a country with tens of millions of students spread across thousands of islands with each district having their own idiosyncratic issues to solve (something I learned from TFA — you can’t generalize educational policy or initiatives). It’s not a limiting factor as long as I take out my ego and strive to learn, absorb, and listen to the voices on the ground as much as possible. But it’s going to be HARD and IMPOSSIBLE if I don’t take the steps to actually do this. The one situation I absolutely hate and want to avoid is telling myself “oh I’ll commit myself to education when I’m ready and have learned all the valuable skillsets from the consulting world” when in reality top-down, ivory-tower approaches in education never really work (and I’ve observed this firsthand!). Being completely honest with myself, the biggest and the harder gap I need to harness isn't my problem-solving and leadership skillsets, but my deep understanding of the ground and the nuances that surround existing infrastructures. Bain is full of incredibly smart, dedicated people and incredible learning opportunities — absolutely no doubt — but I can see myself getting comfortable with the lifestyle and I am not in the place in my life or in the midst of my mission where I’m prepared to be comfortable.
Nicholas Taleb in Skin in the Game coins the term “Intellectual Yet Idiot (IYI)” as the following: “The IYI pathologizes others for doing things he doesn’t understand without ever realizing it is his understanding that may be limited. He thinks people should act according to their best interests and he knows their interests. When plebeians do something that makes sense to them, but not to him, the IYI uses the term “uneducated”… He speaks of “equality of races” and “economic equality” but never went out drinking with a minority cab driver (again, no real skin in the game as the concept is foreign to the IYI). Typically, the IYI get the first order logic right, but not second-order (or higher) effects making him totally incompetent in complex domains.” It’s a bit harsh — but the sentiment against the ivory-tower and lack of skin in the game resonates incredibly deeply with me.
So what does choosing the hard path and committing to it mean realistically on a day-to-day basis? First, it means being 100% fluent in both written and spoken formal Indonesian language to be able to interact with every stakeholder on the ground — whether it’s ministers who I’m presenting strategy to or to school administrators who are customers of the products our team is building. To that note, I’ve already put my skin in the game, started and paid a few thousand dollars for 350 hours of Indonesian lessons to get to a C2 proficiency level (fully fluency) within a year from an incredibly “Bule+” baseline due to living most of my life outside of Indonesia. What this means beyond formal lessons is that I take every chance to practice the language as possible socially and in professional settings, and gradually letting go of the initial fear. I’m thankful for the leads on the team at GovTech for being willing to work with this. Second is to practice radical empathy: to focus on listening to what is happening on the ground in the education space and broader policy and private sector efforts overall, not inserting my own individual biases, and taking the opportunity to learn from all the incredibly talented folk on my team — both from the GovTech side but also from the policy side — who have been invested in the work for a long time. Finally, committing to the hard path is to embrace the difficulty and chaos of innovating in an untested space. Given that the GovTech Edu team is launching products in a way never done before and to stakeholders that the private sector has not touched — there are no off-the-shelf frameworks or methodologies to use. Instead, success in this job is about deeply understanding root cause problems and experimenting with creative solutions in a targeted way. Part of the “hard path” is that there is no right answer — and it’s necessary in this role to have to think deeply and contribute beyond predominantly an execution-level every single day. Knowing that my future path will undoubtedly consist of entrepreneurship in Southeast Asia — these are all incredibly compelling reasons to take the hard path now.
II. Playing long term games with long term (mission-driven and talented) people
“I only play long term games with long term people. All returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.” - Naval Ravikant
“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it. He who doesn’t, pays it.” - Albert Einstein
Not to belabor the point any further — but building and contributing to a challenging, unified effort over a sustained period of time with people that are intrinsically also long-term minded reaps the strongest rewards because: (1) you’re optimizing for a longer period of time where people aren’t maximizing for quick gains and instead are empowering each other to succeed for the benefit of the mission, (2) over time you are able to solve increasingly challenging problems because of a compounding knowledge base, and (3) you reduce friction and increase trust between the people that are building with you — enabling stronger teamwork and potential opportunities / serendipity down the line.
I have known for a long time that one of my foundational life missions is to contribute towards building equitable education infrastructure through work in the intersection of technological innovation, policy and entrepreneurship. Very little gets me more riled up, and it’s a field I’m committed to for the long-term. Educational inequity is also broad and large in scale — and encompasses many different structures that are interlinked to one another (just one example: helping build teacher and school administration infrastructure ultimately influences student learning and motivation, which influences their and their communities perception of education, leading to generational impact in incomes over time and improving the nation’s talent infrastructure). Thus, committing to building equity is not just about understanding a singular facet, but thinking in terms of systems. With systems-level work, one cannot fix everything alone, but rather must collaborate with groups of committed people who are unified in mission but have complementary skillsets and knowledge. By the nature of GovTech Edu coordinating with the Ministry of Education on large-scale, policy-backed efforts, there is already a precedent and commitment on the national level for these efforts to come into fruition. We aren’t working to get to an exit or acquisition and then leave. And the long-term game doesn’t just end in the education sector. GovTech Education is just the start to the coordinated efforts the Indonesian government is applying to bring technological innovation and policy together — and there’s already the vision to apply the same principles to other Ministries, whether in healthcare, transportation, public works, the list goes on. The work that we do for GovTech Education will set the foundation for how this applies to the fabric of Indonesia’s development — in all sectors.
Regardless of where GovTech Edu ends up going as a medium-to-longer term career, it is a rare opportunity to be surrounded by “long-term people” in every sense of the word — not just in terms to their commitment to the firm, but to their missions. Intrinsically as a byproduct of our recruitment process where mission is a key factor in the decision-making process as well as the conviction that predominantly ex-startup folks have had to make to join a government-linked technology company — the mission filter is incredibly high in our organization. Many have cited that this is genuinely one of the most mission-driven teams they’ve ever worked on, and we see this not only in terms of individuals but also in our execution (whether it’s culture or the metrics that matter in product management). The upside to this on a personal level is clear: due to a shared long-term mission, joining GovTech Education is one of those places where you can fully build a network that is aligned in every sense of the word to each other. Similar to the upside of going to school at MIT / Stanford to build a network of the most entrepreneurial folk at the cutting edge of technology, GovTech Education will expose me to people who are at the forefront of thinking about educational innovation, policymaking, and systemic change on a daily basis. Whether that leads to us continuing to build GovTech Education for the long-term, or becoming partners in venture-building, this is undoubtedly the place to meet the “long-term people” that align most with my personal mission.
With both the long-term game and the long-term people coming together in a unified way, I highly believe that the momentum of learning and compounded knowledge will allow us to create significant, lasting impact for Indonesian education and beyond.
III. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a paradigm shift in Indonesia’s education system and to develop specific knowledge
There’s a passage from Marc Andreessen’s blog about career planning (https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_career_planning_part1.html) that absolutely has spoken to me and that I’ll shorten below (although it has so much good meat in it):
“The world is an incredibly complex place and everything is changing all the time. Trying to plan your career is an exercise in futility that will only serve to frustrate you, and to blind you to the really significant opportunities that life will throw your way.
Opportunities that present themselves to you are the consequence—at least partially—of being in the right place at the right time. They tend to present themselves when you’re not expecting it—and often when you are engaged in other activities that would seem to preclude you from pursuing them. And they come and go quickly—if you don’t jump all over an opportunity, someone else generally will and it will vanish.
A senior person at your firm is looking for someone young and hungry to do the legwork on an important project, in addition to your day job.
Your former manager has jumped ship to a hot growth company and calls you three months later and says, come join me.
Or, a small group of your smartest friends are headed to Denny’s at 11PM to discuss an idea for a startup—would you like to come along?
I am continually amazed at the number of people who are presented with an opportunity like one of the above, and pass.
There’s your basic dividing line between the people who shoot up in their careers like a rocket ship, and those who don’t—right there.
The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think.
I believe you should look at your career as a portfolio of jobs/roles/opportunities. Each job that you take, each role that you choose to fill, each opportunity you pursue, will have a certain potential return—the benefits you can get from taking it, whether those benefits come in the form of income, skill development, experience, geographic location, or something else. Each job will also have a certain risk profile—the things that could go wrong, from getting fired for not being able to handle the job’s demands, to having to move somewhere you don’t want to, to the company going bankrupt, to the opportunity cost of not pursuing some other attractive opportunity.
Most people do not think this way. They might occasionally think this way, but they don’t do it systematically. So when an opportunity pops up, they evaluate it on a standalone basis—“boy, it looks risky, I’m not sure I should do it”. What you should automatically do instead is put it in context with all of the other risks you are likely to take throughout your entire career and decide whether this new opportunity fits strategically into your portfolio.
The issue is that without taking risk, you can’t exploit any opportunities. You can live a quiet and reasonably happy life, but you are unlikely to create something new, and you are unlikely to make your mark on the world.”
I love this passage for two reasons. First, is that it exactly fits how I feel about my situation at the moment. Getting to learn about GovTech Edu and the opportunity to be part of the organization was pure serendipity. I casually just hit up this random stranger Rangga (now Chief Product Officer of GovTech and officially my boss) when he was still at Kargo as he posted about consultants transitioning into product roles. Curious about his perspectives, I jumped on a call with him where I explained my passion for the education space and how I spent most of my free time outside of work building Cornerstone — my education non-profit. I’ll never forget what happened after that when Rangga said: “Wait, I’m actually transitioning to the Ministry of Education’s technology arm. You should think about joining us.” And the rest is absolute history. This was a combination of capturing the “right place, right time” sentiment Marc mentioned above and also Naval’s ‘Level 4 Luck’ where your unique skillsets create luck for you. There’s luck involved in the sense that I was lucky to have chanced by Rangga’s post on my LinkedIn feed on that particular day. But there’s also luck involved because I had spent the past two years fully zoned into solve problems in Indonesia’s education sector through Cornerstone. I wasn’t just a consultant with an interest in education, I was living my mission everyday, and that’s what got Rangga to mention the opportunity.
The second reason is because the opportunity to work in the early stages of GovTech Edu itself is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that is extremely difficult to replicate in six month or a year from now with, all things considered, extremely low downside / risk. Let me explain. Where else in the world is the Ministry of Education headed by the former founder of Go-Jek — one of the largest technology companies in Indonesia and Southeast Asia — with an extremely supportive administration / presidency (video linked below to a conversation between Nadiem and President Jokowi this year about the underlying vision of GovTech Edu)? Where else is a government-supported education initiative headed by some of the most talented and mission-driven technology talent Indonesia has (VP’s of Engineering / Design / Data coming from Bukalapak, Go-Jek)? And on the mission and ethos of the organization itself, as a person who has had a lifelong passion and commitment to both education and technology — when else am I going to have the opportunity to drive large-scale change in the intersection of education, policy, and technology that — if proven to work — can have enduring impact in the lives of students, teachers, and the infrastructure of schools going forward? Personally, in terms of the opportunity cost of my time, when else am I going to have such a direct and powerful way to really understand and listen to what’s happening on the ground and get a learning opportunity that is both skillset and context building in a way that is almost perfect for my professional development goals?
There’s a second layer to the “why leave” question — and that’s “why leave now?” If the conviction isn’t immensely there, consulting makes it almost extremely compelling for you to stay. The most common questions I get are: “Why don’t you just wait for one more year — when you’ve developed a better foundation for your consulting skillset and you have greater bargaining power for future employers?” or “Why don’t you do an externship — where you can get both the upside of getting the experience of working in the other company and staying in a prestigious company while eliminating the downside of the other gig not working out?” These are completely valid questions I love because it weeds out those who have not yet developed their conviction. Let me explain why I made my decision to join GovTech Education in spite of these considerations.
In regards to waiting for another year to sharpen my consulting skillset — the key phrase here is “sharpen my consulting skillset”. Of course, the principles-driven problem solving and sharp communication skills consultants build translates to any future job, but there’s the opportunity cost of learning differentiated skillsets consulting definitely cannot provide that are applicable to the careers that are in my personal, long-term horizon (for me specifically, in the realm of deep technology, education, and policy). For me, what GovTech Edu provides that Bain cannot is an opportunity to build up my product chops (in both a strategy and execution manner) in a space with extremely talented product leaders, to sharpen my technical background in an enterprise setting to prepare me for future roles that require both heavy business and technology backgrounds (have observed firsthand that many companies are skeptical to hire consultants as PM’s at least for the more tech-driven roles because an interest in tech does not mean an understanding of technology), and foremost to really be on the ground and develop radical empathy with education stakeholders. The downside to GovTech Edu is that I probably won’t have the opportunity to get as much breadth as Bain would give me and to develop pattern recognition across industries, or to be surrounded constantly with the unrelenting drive to solve for the right answer with structured mentorship. However, given that excessive breadth is actually a downside for me (I know and only want to work in certain industries) and that I’m the type of person to naturally be relentless in complex problem-solving (a supervisor’s review: “Nathan takes pride in being assigned the bigger / more difficult workstreams, will not back away, and has the analytical horsepower to get to a logic-driven answer in a time that is quicker than most people at Bain”) — many of these downsides are something I know I can find my way around given intentional effort. The “skillsets to develop” that Bain has identified for me include sharpening my ability to get to client-ready output (crisper, more targeted messaging) as well as client communications skills that I have not yet had the opportunity to build given most of my work has been in due diligence and strategy projects. These are skillsets that I can also definitely harness in my new role especially much more rigorously on the communications front when I’ll have to present to Director-Generals and other ministry stakeholders. When I weigh out and reflect deeply on the personal applicability of the skillsets learned over the course of the next 2 years in both organizations — GovTech Edu is a no-brainer for me to go into as I approach my future career.
In regards to the externship question where I get to theoretically have the “best of both worlds” — my answer is that doing an externship would probably be the right choice if the organization of note was an established, more fundamentally-set organization. However, given the fact that GovTech Edu is currently in a “0-1, 1-10 phase”, it provides an unbelievable opportunity for me to drive not just the inception of new products, but to be able to drive culture, infrastructure, and frameworks that underpin the foundation of the organization moving forward onto the future. For me, the development of that type of leadership skill on an larger enterprise setting (vs. how I’ve built the skillset in Cornerstone or other student organizations) is something personally incredibly useful going forward — especially as entrepreneurship is a path I know I will take eventually. The second reason is because I know I’m the type of person that, once conviction is developed, cannot do anything less than going all in. If I do an externship for 4-6 months, leave and come back to Bain, and then potentially come back again — there will be a loss of continuity and momentum. And most often than not, you can’t underestimate the power of momentum to drive impactful change (re: “long term games with long term people”).
Ultimately, everything boils down to my personal conviction and beliefs. When I reflect, I recall so distinctly one pre-COVID night when I and a close friend named Rushmin had Korean food for dinner, and I told him that no matter what career path I was on — I was going to make damn sure that I got back to the ground in the education sector the moment an opportunity I believed in came my way. Well — serendipitously — it did. And sometimes when the universe hands you a sign like that and when your gut tells you that it’s the right decision — you just have to trust in your instinct and give it everything you got.
IV. Because I know me better than anyone else— and my personal history tells me that I have thrived and succeeded the strongest when I took the path least taken but also the path I had deep personal conviction in
This one is deeply personal and required a lot of reflection in understanding my own history and where I’ve lived up to my potential in the past, and when I’ve let myself down. Ultimately, every situation in which I’ve been proud of myself was when I ignored societal perspectives of what “the right path” was and followed my own conviction. Every situation where I followed what others were doing was when I let myself down and did not live up to my potential. Let me give some examples.
In high school, I chose to dedicate an immense amount of focus and commitment pursuing my passion in long-distance running knowing full well that I was not the most genetically talented in the sport and had only started running my sophomore year of college with very little athletic background prior (making me likely to be ineligible for college scholarships). My parents and peers told me that it was not worth dedicating so much time into — and that I should focus on more academic extracurriculars where I had an edge (Math, Debate, etc.). Despite this, I gave it my all and realized so much about myself through that process. I realized I was a workhorse and could outwork anybody had I put my mind to something (100+ miles a week was no joke), that I had a talent for empowering others as a coach, and that I had incredible grit and resilience to push past adversity. I didn’t end up running in college and was only second fastest on my team, but the life lessons that the sport imbued were priceless and the stories I shared were what got me accepted into Northwestern. Giving everything I had to running was the road less taken especially given my lack of athletic background, but it served as an integral part of the foundation of myself today and allowed me to harness talents in myself I didn’t know existed.
In college, I turned down a consulting internship offer during my senior year summer to do a data science bootcamp (even before it was “hot”). Friends once again thought I was idiotic. “Why the heck would you pass up a consulting offer when that’s what you potentially want to go into?” The truth is — I was just super interested in data science and had the conviction that I wanted to be great it. So I went for it, and ended up sharpening a skillset that allowed me to succeed in national competitions and meaningfully differentiate myself in job applications. When I was at Kellogg for my Masters, this background immediately gave me a leg up to be an active contributor / leader in many fo the analytics-related classes, and lent itself to getting a letter of recommendation from the Program Head for the MBA program. At Bain, this background allowed me to contribute significantly in cases involving more technical elements such as an AI / deep learning hardware due diligence to the point where as a first-year Associate Consultant — I was able to be the “technical guru” to even the senior partners on the case. Again, pursuing my actual interests even though it was perhaps the road less taken allowed me to create differentiated upside in my life.
Related to this was my choice of internships during college. Had I followed the path my parents and peers thought was ideal — I would have leveraged my freshman year private equity internship to even more prestigious corporate offers in investment banking or consulting. But I went to the career fair and had absolutely zero interest in any of these jobs, and leaned into my passion for educational equity to land an internship at Teach for America that taught me so much about the structural elements of the education system (my parents thought I was absolutely crazy). The recruiter and a person who I can truly say believed in me even at the start, Isabelle Shanafelt, saw this passion firsthand in my day-to-day actions — whether it was volunteering in the Chicago Public Schools or creating opportunities through a service organization I was the Co-President of (GreekBuild) for others to contribute to their communities — and wrote me a recommendation letter that I’m pretty sure sealed the deal. The story wasn’t all rosy — as after the internship TFA actually told me they could not sponsor an international visa for the full-time TFA Corps position — so I had to once again find my place in the world. Given my Computer Science background, I was looking for technology opportunities but only in companies doing impactful work, and I found myself doing product and customer success work at a SaaS scale-up ServiceTitan that was building software for home services companies that were traditionally underserved by technology. There, I saw how the backgrounds of the two founders (Vahe and Ara) as sons of service workers influenced their mission to build ServiceTitan, and how that drove the relentlessness of their spirit. Today, ServiceTitan is worth at ~$10B — but I felt the heart and soul of the organization beyond just the valuation itself — and that’s what compelled to be reflective of my own journey and story, leading to where I am today.
The paths I took throughout my life that made the strongest, most differentiated impact in the person I am today all came from decisions I made unique to myself. It didn’t have to necessarily be “out of the norm” or “contrarian” — it just had to be true to who I was, my intentions, my character, and my skillsets.
It’s a rare thing in this world to feel conviction burning so strong that there’s nothing in this world you’d rather do than to live it fully. The times when I’ve leaned into this feeling have been the times that I’ve grown the most, felt most fulfilled, and overall tapped into my potential in the strongest way.
For me — joining GovTech Education represents who I am at the core — and no matter how the road ahead looks with its obstacles, challenges, and successes, I know that I’ve made the right choice for me. And I won’t look back.
Signing off,
Nate Gunawan
P.S. Massive thank you’s to the people that have empowered me to fully be myself on this journey and have been “thought partners” in life:
Robby Gray: For being a massive homie and for keeping me honest and grounded in terms of how I can be a better person everyday; I wouldn’t be half the man I am without you
Felicia Hanitio + Michi Ferreol: You all are incredible women who have shaped the way that I think about intentional, grassroots-led impact; thank you to you both for opening my eyes to the road less taken
Elaine Indra + Mey Setiono + Niss Ramadanthi: For always lending a listening ear to my wild rants and philosophical rampages; I appreciate you all as some of my best friends and the best co-founders ever for encouraging me to find my true potential on a daily basis + for bringing me down to earth at times and letting me know that life is not as serious as we think
GRC Exec Squad (Rushmin + Nick Halim + Keyla + Stella + Mehak + Robert + Raviraj + Jess Li + Kinnera + Sharadh + Vishal): You all were the impetus to the journey of me really finally coming to who I was when we were first built GRC together. Thank you for inspiring me everyday and for committing to impact in your everyday lives!
Isabelle Shanafelt: You’ve believed in me from day one, when no else did. You listened, understood my story, and wanted to sharpen what at the time was a rawness of passion. You are one of my biggest supporters and I wouldn’t be where I am without you
Grant Yu + Charles Auta: For supporting me in this journey and for being the OG powerlifting family — the first space where I could truly be myself and find my voice at Northwestern
Rangga + Claire: For believing in me enough to fight for my recruitment and for placing in the best possible position to succeed. I’m unbelievably excited to continue building with you both as well as the entire team
My parents + sister: For being supportive of my journey — even if I am a non-conventional child and do crazy things :) And for always being there for me
Cornerstone Team: For making me understand the potential of what passionate and intentional work can result in
Bain mentors (Meng Yang, Cynthia, Nan, Sudi): For pushing me to understand what great looks like and for setting high standards in life and work; thank you for caring for me deeply in beyond just a supervisory sense, and for always advocating for me
Bain friends (too many to list but among a few groups: Berkeley / Permata [but Nate] Squad, AC start class, PEG Squad): You all made it hard to leave — as you all are genuinely some of the brightest, most fun, talented people I know. Whether some of you were aware of this decision process or not, thank you for a BLAST of a time and for pushing me to be my best self everyday
Hi Nathan, it's a really inspiring story about your career choices (and in life honestly)
I relate a lot to your accounts on conviction. (I made some 'unreasonable' choices when following a robotics passion over the typical engineering job)
But question: how much does survivorship bias play in your reflection?
(not a challenge, just a genuine question)
I think a big takeaway for me has been "follow your interest, and let serendipity do its job" but this is quite hard for someone who likes to plan and keep priorities in check. In the process, I've tended to either hedge my bets or go all in on things that didn't make sense retrospectively.