"Love and knowledge will grow exponentially when you share, because both are fluid" (Ailin Iwan: April 2, 2014)
Everyone has a story of how they become who they are, and this is my story…
Bellagio, Las Vegas
Childhood Dreams: To be an Architect
I was born and raised in Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia. I immigrated to the United States after finishing my high-school. It was not an easy transition for me to learn a new culture and to continue my study with a new language when I moved to the United States. Yet, this experience has become my first step of appreciating the various cultures that I get to expose in my adult life. As a girl, I have always dream to be an architect; influenced by my aunt, Sylvie Wirawaty, who is today an architect and an academic staff at the University of Tarumanegara and Bina Nusantara in Jakarta. My first building design was a plastic legos tower in my toddler years and I was even able to draw a church elevation by the age of 7. My interest in building design continued as I finished my education at UC Berkeley, majoring in Architecture with double minors in business and city planning. My college years were busy and fun with various activities such as joining different organizations, participating and winning architectural competition, interning at architecture companies, writing essays about buildings, cities, and admiring amazing world-known architects by attending their lectures. I met with my first boss, John Wynn, at the airplane during a trip when I was picking up my younger sister, Rita, to travel to the U.S from Jakarta. A guy next to me - who later became my first boss - asked me a lot of things related to architecture and it was a conversation about 'homelessness' that made him interested to hire me. I told him about my dream to help the poor and I have written a paper about homelessness for my study. He told me that he was a homeless who was making his fortune through real estate. He offered me a job at his new shopping mall development, the Globe Mall, in Fremont, California. I was enticed with the dream of putting together different cultures in one site. The Globe Mall project reminded me of 'Epcot' Florida, a Disney theme park that put together various miniature cultural buildings in one site. However, remembering the lesson from City Planning courses, where academics would criticised Disney's representation style, I was proposing a different approach to this project by introducing the concept that I have developed at UC Berkeley studio: The Body, Mind, and Spirit of Architecture. I further developed this concept to Body (building design), Mind (landscaping), and Spirit (lighting). My boss was happy with the development of this concept, particularly after I recruited many talented architects who can further translate this concept into reality. My responsibilities kept increasing from simply producing a marketing brochure to in actuality leading the project and soon I was promoted to be the Project Director of the Globe Shopping Mall. During my nearly 2 1/2 years stay at this company, I was able to developed the two levels of this concept: "Body" (building design) by borrowing idea from Renzo Piano's concept for Tjibaou Cultural Center and "Mind" by developing further my studio's concept where I used mathematics the golden ratio 'Fibonacci's series to connect a building, in which the connections within the buildings should be done with landscaping. Kevin Horns, a talented architect from RTKL was recruited to further developed the building design part. David Gates, the president and founder of Gates and Associates was recruited to further developed the landscaping design part. The third aspect of 3 Divisions is the "Spirit" that represented with Lighting. I felt blessed to be the first and the youngest female director at that time.
Career Evolution: Building Design to Education
While I was working professionally at the Globe Mall project, I also started to volunteer to teach children and teenagers in a local church. Interestingly, what seems to be a hobby, somehow became a seed for a second career. Soon after I left the Globe, I gave a try to work in the educational field. Having no backgrounds whether teaching in a classroom or taking any courses about education, I started in the most humble way. I took one course of early childhood education at a local community college: City College of San Francisco (CCSF). This one course was an eye opening to me for a new world that I was not aware before since the lecturer, Joanne Devine was talking about: Brain Development. I started to take more courses on ECE and began my first job in this field: as a part-time teacher in an after school program.
My career transition is always been a constant battle between my passion in building design and a calling to be an educator. I have always dreamt to be part of the solution of the world's problems as I have witnessed many injustices, conflicts, and problems due to the disparity of socio-economic backgrounds, misunderstanding among cultures, and the lack of respect for human's dignity. The latter vision prompted me to change my career path from architecture to education.
After several years of struggling, worked as a building designer while volunteered teaching, started my own company and experienced first hand the real estate recession in California that pushed me to close it down; I finally decided to think really hard about my passion in life beyond the prestige of titles, monetary rewards, and other perks. I have realised that breaking the glass-ceiling of being the first female director at a development company in which dominated by males colleagues and being a CEO of my own company, both are my actions to get an approval from patriarchal society in the Eastern Culture (where I came from as an ethnic Chinese who was born in Indonesia), that I as a woman am EQUAL with my male counterparts in the academic and professional world.
It was my privilege to receive higher education in the United States and to experience and to learn the Western values that are more mature when it comes to human rights, feminism, freedom of speech, and many others. Finally, when I decided to go back to school for my masters, I created my own subject learning under the faculty of education. My masters degree focus is in global citizenship education at the San Francisco State University. This subject is very theoretical and complex, yet I got to learn a lot about the past, present, and future educational approaches to meet to the demand of the 21st century. Aside from attending a graduate school, I was able to work in Jumpstart program that gearing to assist children of low-income families with their vocabularies expansion through reading children books. Post my masters' graduation, I worked in a private preschool which enabled me to interact with another type of children and families. Shifting field from building design to education was not easy, but I have learned so much from my graduate school courses at SFSU, volunteer work at Jumpstart, and teaching job at preschools. All these experiences accelerate my learning curve and at the same time these experiences were humiliating and eye-opening.
Quality and Sustainability of Learning Environments
In year 2012, I got accepted into a PhD program in The University of Hong Kong under the academic supervision of an Endowed Professor Nirmala Rao (A brilliant scholar, an endowed professor in early childhood education, whom I deeply respect for her work to improve children's rights through her journal articles, consultation at UNICEF and WorldBank, and many more). She gives me the idea to study environment as the third teacher: a comparative study of early childhood programs in Hong Kong and San Francisco. This initial idea was revised in my 1st PhD semester and presently my research is entitled: "Quality and Sustainability of Early Learning Environments: Case Studies of Award-Winning Green Preschools in Bali, Berkeley, and Hong Kong." I have completed my PhD study in mid-September 2016 and I am in love with my research. Especially, I learn even more how important my research to help combating the global warming. This research also gives me a sense of fulfilment as it links the two fields that I am very passionate about: architecture and education.
Reflecting upon my architectural background, I see the correlation between building and children. In order to build a higher tower, one needs to lay down a stronger and deeper structural foundation to a building. Similarly, in order to nurture a loving, responsible, knowledgable, and kind-hearted human being, one needs to lay a deeper foundation (socio-emotional, academic, psychological, physical health, and many others) to a person. This foundation is in early childhood education (0 to 5). With the current brain development research, I would argue that the foundation is even before they were born, that is in the womb.
I was born and raised in Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia. I immigrated to the United States after finishing my high-school. It was not an easy transition for me to learn a new culture and to continue my study with a new language when I moved to the United States. Yet, this experience has become my first step of appreciating the various cultures that I get to expose in my adult life. As a girl, I have always dream to be an architect; influenced by my aunt, Sylvie Wirawaty, who is today an architect and an academic staff at the University of Tarumanegara and Bina Nusantara in Jakarta. My first building design was a plastic legos tower in my toddler years and I was even able to draw a church elevation by the age of 7. My interest in building design continued as I finished my education at UC Berkeley, majoring in Architecture with double minors in business and city planning. My college years were busy and fun with various activities such as joining different organizations, participating and winning architectural competition, interning at architecture companies, writing essays about buildings, cities, and admiring amazing world-known architects by attending their lectures. I met with my first boss, John Wynn, at the airplane during a trip when I was picking up my younger sister, Rita, to travel to the U.S from Jakarta. A guy next to me - who later became my first boss - asked me a lot of things related to architecture and it was a conversation about 'homelessness' that made him interested to hire me. I told him about my dream to help the poor and I have written a paper about homelessness for my study. He told me that he was a homeless who was making his fortune through real estate. He offered me a job at his new shopping mall development, the Globe Mall, in Fremont, California. I was enticed with the dream of putting together different cultures in one site. The Globe Mall project reminded me of 'Epcot' Florida, a Disney theme park that put together various miniature cultural buildings in one site. However, remembering the lesson from City Planning courses, where academics would criticised Disney's representation style, I was proposing a different approach to this project by introducing the concept that I have developed at UC Berkeley studio: The Body, Mind, and Spirit of Architecture. I further developed this concept to Body (building design), Mind (landscaping), and Spirit (lighting). My boss was happy with the development of this concept, particularly after I recruited many talented architects who can further translate this concept into reality. My responsibilities kept increasing from simply producing a marketing brochure to in actuality leading the project and soon I was promoted to be the Project Director of the Globe Shopping Mall. During my nearly 2 1/2 years stay at this company, I was able to developed the two levels of this concept: "Body" (building design) by borrowing idea from Renzo Piano's concept for Tjibaou Cultural Center and "Mind" by developing further my studio's concept where I used mathematics the golden ratio 'Fibonacci's series to connect a building, in which the connections within the buildings should be done with landscaping. Kevin Horns, a talented architect from RTKL was recruited to further developed the building design part. David Gates, the president and founder of Gates and Associates was recruited to further developed the landscaping design part. The third aspect of 3 Divisions is the "Spirit" that represented with Lighting. I felt blessed to be the first and the youngest female director at that time.
Career Evolution: Building Design to Education
While I was working professionally at the Globe Mall project, I also started to volunteer to teach children and teenagers in a local church. Interestingly, what seems to be a hobby, somehow became a seed for a second career. Soon after I left the Globe, I gave a try to work in the educational field. Having no backgrounds whether teaching in a classroom or taking any courses about education, I started in the most humble way. I took one course of early childhood education at a local community college: City College of San Francisco (CCSF). This one course was an eye opening to me for a new world that I was not aware before since the lecturer, Joanne Devine was talking about: Brain Development. I started to take more courses on ECE and began my first job in this field: as a part-time teacher in an after school program.
My career transition is always been a constant battle between my passion in building design and a calling to be an educator. I have always dreamt to be part of the solution of the world's problems as I have witnessed many injustices, conflicts, and problems due to the disparity of socio-economic backgrounds, misunderstanding among cultures, and the lack of respect for human's dignity. The latter vision prompted me to change my career path from architecture to education.
After several years of struggling, worked as a building designer while volunteered teaching, started my own company and experienced first hand the real estate recession in California that pushed me to close it down; I finally decided to think really hard about my passion in life beyond the prestige of titles, monetary rewards, and other perks. I have realised that breaking the glass-ceiling of being the first female director at a development company in which dominated by males colleagues and being a CEO of my own company, both are my actions to get an approval from patriarchal society in the Eastern Culture (where I came from as an ethnic Chinese who was born in Indonesia), that I as a woman am EQUAL with my male counterparts in the academic and professional world.
It was my privilege to receive higher education in the United States and to experience and to learn the Western values that are more mature when it comes to human rights, feminism, freedom of speech, and many others. Finally, when I decided to go back to school for my masters, I created my own subject learning under the faculty of education. My masters degree focus is in global citizenship education at the San Francisco State University. This subject is very theoretical and complex, yet I got to learn a lot about the past, present, and future educational approaches to meet to the demand of the 21st century. Aside from attending a graduate school, I was able to work in Jumpstart program that gearing to assist children of low-income families with their vocabularies expansion through reading children books. Post my masters' graduation, I worked in a private preschool which enabled me to interact with another type of children and families. Shifting field from building design to education was not easy, but I have learned so much from my graduate school courses at SFSU, volunteer work at Jumpstart, and teaching job at preschools. All these experiences accelerate my learning curve and at the same time these experiences were humiliating and eye-opening.
Quality and Sustainability of Learning Environments
In year 2012, I got accepted into a PhD program in The University of Hong Kong under the academic supervision of an Endowed Professor Nirmala Rao (A brilliant scholar, an endowed professor in early childhood education, whom I deeply respect for her work to improve children's rights through her journal articles, consultation at UNICEF and WorldBank, and many more). She gives me the idea to study environment as the third teacher: a comparative study of early childhood programs in Hong Kong and San Francisco. This initial idea was revised in my 1st PhD semester and presently my research is entitled: "Quality and Sustainability of Early Learning Environments: Case Studies of Award-Winning Green Preschools in Bali, Berkeley, and Hong Kong." I have completed my PhD study in mid-September 2016 and I am in love with my research. Especially, I learn even more how important my research to help combating the global warming. This research also gives me a sense of fulfilment as it links the two fields that I am very passionate about: architecture and education.
Reflecting upon my architectural background, I see the correlation between building and children. In order to build a higher tower, one needs to lay down a stronger and deeper structural foundation to a building. Similarly, in order to nurture a loving, responsible, knowledgable, and kind-hearted human being, one needs to lay a deeper foundation (socio-emotional, academic, psychological, physical health, and many others) to a person. This foundation is in early childhood education (0 to 5). With the current brain development research, I would argue that the foundation is even before they were born, that is in the womb.
Influential people in my life: Mom, Grandma, and Mother Mary
My Mother, Oey Suzy Wirawaty Iwan
Renaissance Hotel, Hong Kong
I have an amazing mother, Oey Suzy Wirawaty, whom I look up to. My mom was a gifted child who skipped one level of schooling in her primary grade and was in the same level with her older brother (my uncle, Doctor Fainal Wirawan). She was a bright student, went to a medical school for college, and one of the two students who received the highest recognition from the faculty of medicine at the University of Tarumanegara, Jakarta-Indonesia. She married my dad, Susanto Iwan, an entrepreneur, and was not able to complete her medical doctor degree. Her years of experiences in the University and in taking care of her younger siblings, made her a super mom who supported my siblings; James, Rita, Nita, and myself to achieve our dreams. My siblings and I earned our first bachelor degrees from University of California Berkeley in different disciplines. I earned by B.A in Architecture with double minors in Business and City planning in 2003. James is in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 2005, Rita is in Psychology in 2010, and Nita is in business and administration in 2015. Her love, dedication, and sacrifice enabled us to enjoy happy childhoods though it does not escape from family conflicts and dynamics. I was not an easy child to raise, rebellious, and always challenged her authority. Yet, she loves me with an unconditional love, supports my career, give me many wise advice, and always encourage me to pick up myself whenever I failed. Without her role-modelling and continual guidance, I do not think that I would be able to achieve my dreams to pursue a career that I am passionate about in the field of education and building design. My journey as an educator, author, designer, wife, and mother is possible because of her encouragement and support. My mother never loose hope in time when I felt hopeless and her perspectives on life is always positive and wise. I hope that I can be a "Virtuous Selfless Woman" just like my MOM who knows how to care for her family, strike a good balance in career, and be a devoted wife and mother to my future family in addition to my professional life. I shall embrace my mom's philosophy of balancing life like making "kopi susu" (an Indonesian terms for Milk-Coffee").
My Grandmother, Ong Soat HongI am blessed to have a wise and wonderful maternal grandmother, Ong Soat Hong, whom I called: AMA. As I witnessed her life journey and how she grows in wisdom, knowledge, and compassionate heart full with love and cheerfulness as she age, I have a sense of hope and stability in life. Ama gave birth and raised 7 children whom all become successful people in society, have strong marriages, great parents, and grandparents. Ama's 18 grand-children are all well-educated and also have successful career themselves. Not only Ama assisted her children's weddings, she attended many of her grandchildren's wedding celebrations including mine where she travelled from Jakarta to Hong Kong. Presently, Ama has 17 great-grandchildren and she often interacts with many of them (for those who live outside Jakarta, when they came to visit her). Ama also knows how to take good care of herself by staying healthy, positive, exercise (she does tai-chi for 30 minutes everyday), and most importantly she prays everyday. Ama and Engkong (my belated paternal grandfather) was baptised in 2006. Their over 50 years solid marriage become a testament for her family members to stay faithful through thick and thin on marriage. Her life is an inspiration to me, her children, grandchildren, and I believe one day for her great-grandchildren too.
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Saint Mary: Mother of Jesus Christ
I have always admire Saint Mary for her courage, purity, deep love, and devotion to God and sacrifice for humanity. It must have been a difficult journey for her to receive the mission to be the mother of Christ, whose mission is to save the world. I was heavily pregnant near Christmas time when I finallly realised how tough being pregnant while working and traveling. I could not imagine that Saint Mary, who was heavily pregnant, had to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Saint Mary's obeyed God's calling and whole-heartedly did her best to fulfil her mission on earth. I could imagine that it must have been a real honour but also a challenging task to raise Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Growing up, Jesus must have extraordinary intelligent and wisdom and it would be Saint Mary who was the first to nurture Jesus and educate child Jesus until the time for Him to fulfil His mission came. Baby Jesus who was destined to rule the Heavens and the Earth and yet he was born in a manger. I really love this image of Saint Mary, Saint Joseph, and our Lord Jesus Christ in a manger. This is a perfect family that always encourage me and that always gives me hope whenever I feel down. I hope that my husband and I can follow the great role-modelling from Saint Mary and Saint Joseph in raising baby Jesus into a fine young man: Fully Human and Fully Divine.
"Imitating Christ's Humility": (Philippians 2: 1-11)
Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from His love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to His own advantage; rather, He made Himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to death - even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in Heaven and on Earth, under the Earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
"Imitating Christ's Humility": (Philippians 2: 1-11)
Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from His love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to His own advantage; rather, He made Himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to death - even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in Heaven and on Earth, under the Earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
