Scholarship / Chevening Leadership Essay - Theo from Indonesia [2]

Hello, I am Theo from Indonesia. Would like to submit my essay for Chevening next month. I really appreciate your constructive feedback on this.

Chevening is looking for individuals who will be future leaders or influencers in their home countries.

Explain how you meet this requirement, using clear examples of your own leadership and influencing skills to support your answer.

Two qualities that I mainly attribute to being a leader are visionary and perseverant. This combination is what makes a leader influential through his actions. My work as a life science young professional from a bioprocessing graduate is the representation of these traits which I wish to live up onwards as a scientist.

After graduating in 2019, I was hired as a production scientist by the first Indonesian biotech plant, Kalbio Global Medika, built in mid-2016. The focus is to generate protein from engineered cells called biopharmaceuticals. As it was still at early development stage, I acknowledged this role to partly involve in its progress. Regarding the manufacturing system, automated cleaning validation is crucial to ensure no chemical residues on production tools after being cleaned with machine, my assignment in late 2020. As the understanding of chemical properties was fundamental, I mapped all components of intermediate materials including the newly planned insulin product. During the study, I discussed several components that were not completely informed in their published data sheets to my supervisor and finally took approximate value for their properties with scientifically sound basis. This was critical as the validation would pick the worst-case component; hence no single chemical should be left unassessed. Afterwards, I arranged a specific protocol for this validation and successfully executed the steps by January 2021.

Subsequently, I draft the report progressively following the review from our supervisors and managers. As of April 2021, the final report was approved and later submitted to the Indonesian Supervisory Board of Food and Drugs as our proof of compliance. Before this validation run was accomplished, cleaning of tools should be performed manually with continuous testing, resulting in longer manhour and thereby higher production cost. Instead of December 2021 as the due date, the run was completed earlier, allowing automation in two production batches by far. My finding about shorter dirty hold time for insulin intermediate materials became an important reference to production activities to avoid residue build-up inside the tools. Moreover, this run was referred by our quality control department to be applied in the cleaning of laboratory tools.

Looking back to my campus life, I applied my influencing skills through assistantship for calculus subject in 2018. This fourth attempt to apply was due to my sheer courage to experience the run of an academic setting. Through this role, I assisted a diverse group of engineering freshmen's academic performance for this compulsory credit. By applying my analytical skills, I identified students' inaccuracy in weekly worksheets and notified them through constructive written feedback. Furthermore, I mapped the class attainment towards the objectives and found which sections needed further help. Therefore, I conducted additional classes for refreshments to ensure they were progressing. The Student Association of Metallurgical Engineering recognized my effort then invited me to direct an extra class for their freshmen. At the end of the semester, the class I assisted achieved 98% passing rate and the faculty bestowed me an excellence award.