Dewi Mustajab: Young Professional Rising to the Challenge for Economic Equality
In Dewi’s world, she maintains a distinct line between her private and public personas. In unfamiliar settings, she's a quiet observer, often retreating into solitude when overwhelmed. Among those she trusts, she's assertive, often the center of laughter and engaging conversations, comfortable in sharing her thoughts and humor, skilled in telling both funny and not-so-funny jokes.
Anyone who gets to interact with Dewi Mustajab at work for the first time ends up deeply impressed by her maturity and composure, uncharacteristic of a young woman in her early twenties. Yet, once you get to know her a little better, getting a chance to peek inside the more guarded parts of her world, Dewi reveals more aspects of herself: humorous, opinionated, often vocally concerned about various social issues, harboring a vision for economic and educational equity.
A Gen-Z native Singaporean of Indonesian descent, Dewi graduated in 2021 from Nanyang Technological University with a degree in public policy and international relations. She started at Binance as an intern, excelling in her role before joining the company's global communications team full-time.
Acknowledging Privilege
Despite hailing from an ordinary Singaporean family, Dewi candidly acknowledges her "privileged" status of being born in such a country, a rarity in self-descriptions. She attributes her current achievements to being "fortunate enough" from a young age, including growing up in Singapore, which meant being able to access high-quality public education throughout her life, supported by the country's favorable socioeconomic conditions and social mobility.
However, she also sees the discrepancies beneath the shiny veneer. Her favorite book is This Is What Inequality Looks Like, which depicts the life of Singapore's disadvantaged classes, and social policies responsible for their condition, and ponders ways to promote socioeconomic equality.
Her perspective is not limited to Singapore. She often recalls visiting her mother's hometown in Indonesia, with its rough roads and simple tin-roofed schools. She observed local children running on dusty roads who, despite being intelligent and hardworking, were likely to miss out on quality education due to economic problems – which, for many, meant closing the door on life's possibilities.
According to World Bank Data from 2022, Indonesia's GDP per capita was 4,788 USD, while Singapore's stood at 82,807 USD, over 17 times that of Indonesia. Dewi feels she naturally faced fewer obstacles growing up in Singapore than most children growing up in Indonesia.
From then on, Dewi recognized her luck and never took what she had for granted. She wondered what could be done to minimize the inequality she discovered. In university, she chose public policy as her major, with a primary interest in Southeast Asia.
The reason, somewhat vague in her mind at that point, was to look back at the root of these issues, understand how economic and educational equality could be better achieved, and make children in Indonesia and other developing regions as fortunate as herself.
Finding Another Path
For a graduate from a top national university majoring in public policy and dedicated to economic and educational equality, the most logical career path would have been to join a government organization, just like 80% of her classmates did after graduation.
However, Dewi found herself drawn to work that offered faster results. Achieving economic equality from within government organizations is often a big project whose progress is measured in decades. During her studies, she also considered the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry as a path and was moved by Binance's vision of freedom of money.
Dewi's journey at Binance began with an internship in the summer of 2021, as she joined the global communications team. During the selection process, two interviewers were undecided between her and another candidate with a similarly excellent educational background but more PR experience. Eventually, they chose Dewi, who had no experience, because PR skills can be learned, but her rigorous critical thinking were much harder to come by. Binance was willing to invest time in her.
Dewi also had a lasting impression of Binance HR from that time, where she received some helpful advice: "Don't worry about not having relevant experience; focus on talking about your strengths."
Although the team eagerly wanted to fill that internship role, Dewi couldn't join quickly. Nevertheless, Binance kept the position open for her, thinking, "If she's the person we want, why can't we wait a month?"
This wasn't a selfish environment, Dewi thought.
Her first independent assignment was data-related, building a media monitoring dashboard from scratch to provide strategic support for the PR team. Later on, executives would come to ask her directly what the data meant and how it could contribute to the team's strategies.
Though she felt nervous about the weight of these questions, she went for it anyway, constantly adjusting her dashboard based on feedback to provide better data support and guide strategic planning for the team.
Dewi's family had wished for her to join a more stable government organization, especially during the pandemic. She used her internship to convince her parents and others to trust her choice, also reinforced her confidence that with Binance, they can shape a future of economic freedom and equality that crypto promises.
Outwardly and Inwardly
Dewi seems naturally suited for her role at Binance, facing rapidly developing dynamics every day as a member of the global communications team. Whenever work slows down, she proactively asks colleagues if there's anything she can assist with.
In her first month as a full-time employee, she was asked if she wanted to try managing offline events. Having never done so, she was nervous but still felt she could give it a shot. She participated in one of Binance's most important annual offline events, the Blockchain Week in Dubai. The venue was unexpectedly cold due to the strong air conditioning, leaving Dewi and her colleagues shivering, some desperately asking for leftover Binance shirts to keep warm.
This event was Dewi's first real-world encounter with her colleagues. She was still feeling new but had to support on-site speakers and facilitate interviews for executives amid all sorts of contingencies.
Her initial reaction was one of panic, feeling overwhelmed by the responsibility as a fresh graduate, yet she knew she couldn't back down. The night before the event, she hid in her hotel room, her usual way to decompress. But when the stage lights came on and the conference began, everything felt right because "it all entered into a familiar flow and rhythm."
Dewi's colleagues were impressed by her composure during the event. For instance, when CZ was unable to come due to COVID just one day before the event's start, Dewi and her team had to quickly contact journalists who had arrived or were en route to deliver the unpleasant news and arrange remote interviews as a contingency.
Through this experience, Dewi's confidence grew. In more and more situations, she practiced the approach that is best described as, "I haven't done this before, but I believe I can try and do it." Binance was growing on her, and she has become increasingly brave in expressing her views, no matter who she faced, and her steadfast character has begun to shine through.
Family Bonding
Dewi's personality is inseparable from the flat and free atmosphere at Binance, which is in a way similar to her own upbringing in a large family. This meant growing up and learning to deal with people of different characters, and if you didn't express yourself boldly, your voice could easily be drowned out.
Her family's influence goes further than that, giving Dewi a depth beyond that of many of her peers. Her siblings had grown up and left home, while her father's health was poor and he needed someone by his side; she was the one who stayed. Dewi herself had the desire to take care of others, which brought her happiness. Her role at Binance also supported this lifestyle, with the fully remote work setting allowing her to stay at home in Singapore, arranging her schedule as needed when family members have hospital visits, with her father's room right next door.
However, she sometimes feels conflicted, thinking, "Should I go back?" when traveling or on business for more than two weeks. She is drawn to the allure of an independent world beyond, but the familial bond often beckons her home.
Dewi is not above the simple pleasures of life, either — sharing a laugh with friends, indulging in weekend Netflix binges, and swimming with her siblings. Since her freshman year, she has kept a habit of revisiting the film "3 Idiots" every September to rekindle her passion for life.
That year, when she first moved away from home to an unfamiliar setting of a college campus, overwhelmed by a flood of new information in the darkness of her room, she was struck by the reality, "Wow, this is all actually happening." That movie, resonating with her mood at the time, became a ritual marking the start of each new year.