Sunday, March 13^th 2016, XL Future Leaders Jakarta class has the privilege to hear an inspiring session from the humble Drg. Hotlin Ompusunggu. Ompusunggu is the recipient of Whitley Fund for Nature awards and is widely recognized for her astonishing work in preserving the health, livelihood, and environment in Kalimantan.

“Anyone knows the meaning of the word Kalimantan?”, Ompusunggu opened up her session by asking an interesting question. As she saw no hands in the air she then briefly explained that the word Kalimantan is a combination of Kali (river) and Mantan (forest). It is indeed substantial to keep the forest green so we could still call Kalimantan, Kalimantan.

During this 2-hour session, Ompusunggu and XL Future Leaders students discussed various topics ranging from her challenges, journey, and leadership values. The discussion came very lively as it was totally aligned with XL Future Leaders workshop on Social Innovations. In this workshop, students were discovering opportunity to contribute towards the development of Indonesia using their ability to tackle social problems and to correct the unjust equilibrium. More than that, they were also asked to forge a new, stable equilibrium that releases trapped potential. What Ompusunggu shared cleared the cloud of doubt because many of the students are on their final year at university hence they need more information about what’s happening out there in the real world. Because of this session, some students found that money is not everything in considering future jobs. Contribution and passion are actually the key for innovation especially in social context.

Finally, this inspiring dentist turned forest guardian closed her session by giving the message to everyone in the room, “Always listen to your heart, but always open to new perspective. And also don’t forget to make family part of your dream.”

Head to http://www.alamsehatlestari.org/ to check out Hotlin Ompusunggu’s amazing work.