A Conversation with Minerva Graduate Student Jennilie

This is part of a series of profiles introducing Minerva’s Master in Decision Analysis (MDA) students from the Class of 2023. If you would like to learn more about the MDA program, please visit our website.

Born in Indonesia and currently living in Bali, Jennilie Ng explores business partnerships tied to new investments in Environment, Social, Governance (ESG) companies. She previously worked as a Project Management Office Manager at PMI and a strategy consultant at Bain & Company and is also passionate about improving education in Indonesia. While she describes herself as a generalist, Jennilie realized she “couldn’t escape from the data’’. In order to keep up with the current trend of digitalization, she began to look for graduate programs to continue to challenge herself to grow.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Jennilie began to look for online programs that would allow her to remain in Bali. She spoke with a former colleague who she greatly respected and learned that they were currently attending Minerva’s MDA program. After researching the MDA, Jennilie was particularly impressed by Minerva’s pedagogy and the continuous feedback from professors, like other online programs she had experienced only focused on the success of end-of-semester exams. Instead, Minerva students were continuously evaluated and provided feedback on their understanding of the materials after each class throughout the course, which she believed to be a much more effective model. Comforted by the fact that she could receive a quality education without relocating, Jennilie did not hesitate to apply. In her mind, “Minerva was built as a university without a physical building, and delivers education virtually…It seemed like the perfect fit.”

The MDA’s curricular focus also stood out to Jennilie as she appreciated that it did not only focus on data science but builds a strong foundational understanding of analytics techniques. As a generalist who has worked in dozens of different industries, Jennilie values skills that are transferable and can be applied to any new field. “Sometimes the data I am given isn’t representative; it doesn’t tell the full story. Meanwhile, I need to make a decision,” Jennilie shares. By learning how to understand complex data and also how to utilize those findings to make data-informed decisions, Jennilie will be able to face diverse challenges throughout her professional future.

Now as a member of Minerva’s MDA Class of 2023, Jennilie is acquiring new transferable skills and continuing to gain more knowledge about the world. She particularly enjoys hearing her classmates’ global perspectives and firmly believes that her Minerva education will provide her with the knowledge and approach to continue to grow in her current role and beyond.