Forbes, an American business magazine, recently named XL Future Leaders alumna, Leonika Boedioetomo, to their “30 under 30” list, composed of the world’s brightest social entrepreneurs, start-up founders in technology, arts, healthcare & science, media, finance and retail. The list celebrates bright minds across Asia that made significant difference and disrupting in their respective industry.

One familiar name is our homegrown student and entrepreneur from Surabaya class, Leonika Boedioetomo. Leonika is the Chief Executive of Reblood, a Surabaya-based start-up that designed to speed the process of finding blood for medical use. XLFL talks over the phone with this smiley girl about her latest achievement and aspiration towards healthcare service in Indonesia.

XLFL : Hi Leonika, huge congrats on making it to the prestigious list. What are you up to these days?

Halo… I am now very busy with Reblood and Start Surabaya. Reblood itself is actually part of Start Surabaya, an incubation program aims to enhance the emerging start-ups in Surabaya. At the moment, I am on my way to Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember to conduct a roadshow there.

XLFL : How did you make through the list?

Back on November 2015, Rana Wehbe from Forbes contacted me through LinkedIn. She said that I was shortlisted in the ’30 Under 30’ list. At first I had no idea what it is and she said that I basically didn’t have to do anything at that point. February 2016, Forbes contacted me again and ask several questions, I also had to submit Reblood’s profile, my photo, and stuff. Finally, in a beautiful morning on late February, an email came from Forbes stating that I am on the list under healthcare industry.

It struck me but I kept my cool. One thing for sure, it injected more spirit to my self and Reblood team. It confirms that our work has positive impact.

XLFL : That is awesome. What’s the inception process like for Reblood?

Throwback to my school time, biology has been my all time favorite subject at school. I was dreaming to become a doctor or biologist. I have high curiosity on health industry. However, my parents told me to pick IT as my bachelor degree. Well, I still liked it anyway though. I love doing IT and coding, it is big part of my life now. But my love for health industry remains so that’s why I co-found Reblood.

The biggest challenge that I have to deal with is combining two things I love the most, biology and IT. It turned out that we can combine those two and it is really fun to see how IT and healthcare integrated.

XLFL : How did you come up with such cool idea?

Honestly, Reblood was not the initial idea. Before Reblood, I initiated another program called BloobIs to help solving blood supply system. After conducting research, I found that supply-chain was not the core issue here. I need to address the problem, and the real problem is lack of donor in Indonesia. My team and I identified two main factors for that: difficulty to find blood donation event and lack of knowledge from the people. People generally aware of the importance of blood donation but many got rejected because of lack preparation. That is where Reblood comes in, we provide information and encourage people to donate their blood.

XLFL : Seeing where you are now, tell us the most impactful learning you got from XL Future Leaders program.

The program helped me a lot especially for effective communication. I am doing intensive networking with multiple stakeholders such as PMI, government, and so much more. Sometimes it’s really tricky so that I have to utilize the learning I got from XLFL. As I did many ideation during XLFL too, I get used to of long-hour discussion – I would say I have good endurance at that. I am forced to be innovative and have willingness to execute at the same time. Thanks to XLFL for that.

Check out http://reblood.com/ for more information about Reblood.

Head to http://www.forbes.com/30-under-30-asia-2016/ to see the full list of Forbes ’30 Under 30’ Asia