Alifia Darmayanti (Alfa) is a Green Energy Transition Indonesia Project Officer at IESR. In this role, she is involved in accelerating Indonesia’s energy transition by helping GETI Team in implementing strategi, executing workplan, and supporting administrative work.

Before joining IESR, she worked as a Project Officer in a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) project for the Expansion of Drinking Water Service Area from 2019 to 2020. Academically, she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Engineering from STTL YLH Yogyakarta and later pursued a Master’s degree in Technology for Sustainable Development at the Graduate School of Universitas Gadjah Mada. During her studies, she joined a research team investigating river island geometry in Indonesia and its relationship with resistance to river currents.

Since 2020, amidst work and graduate studies, she has been actively managing a book club—something that originally started back in 2016. The concept is simple: summarizing popular science books into presentations to make them more accessible, especially for friends who aren’t avid readers or still perceive reading as less relevant than hands-on experience in the field. My personal belief is that, even though important issues aren’t always light or entertaining, they can still be made relatable.

A love for reading has been a part of her life since childhood—just like many Indonesian kids, it all started with Bobo magazine, then slowly expanded to fiction, and eventually, more non-fiction books. Since 2023, her favorite book remains Ask More by Frank Sesno. She is still deeply impressed and can never forget Sesno’s opening message in his book:
“Asking the right question, at the right time, of the right person—and knowing what to do with the answer you get. Knowing what to listen for and being skilled in probing for answers to show how all of us can use the right questions to obtain information that might otherwise elude us, to solve difficult problems, to be more creative and better informed, or to make stronger human connections.”

Outside of work and books, she also enjoys gardening—although more often than not, things don’t grow as planned. But that never stops her from trying again. Because in work and in life, sometimes things don’t grow, but that doesn’t mean we stop planting.