Prita Kemal Gani, Founder & Director LSPR Jakarta – Indonesia, followed her childhood dream – to be a teacher and it led her to become a highly regarded professional in Education in the field of Public Relations and Communications.
About 23 years ago she established & became the Founder & Director of her own Institute offering courses in Public Relations and that Institute grew and had been upgraded to a College of Communication and became The London School of Public Relations, Graduate School of Communication (LSPR).
She feels that public relation is not an easy profession because top positions in a company are usually occupied by men. But this did not hinder her to chase her passion to make a significant contribution and she continues to harness her leadership skills and keep a wide network with women to learn from their success too. She credits self-discipline as the key to fulfill her personal and professional goals. Her work and her other social engagements are scheduled in-between her day and after everything is settled with family matters. She puts her family first and that gains a tremendous return of support from them, she says.
A Bachelors in Public Relations from London City College of Management and Masters in Business Administration from International Academy of Management and Economics in Manila, Philippines, Prita belives in the power of Dreams & Goals. “We should never be afraid to pursue our dreams; the most important thing is to find the right way and opportunity to persevere in achieving those dreams. Now people believe that if the woman in the family is successful, it will give more success and prosperity to the whole family”, says Prita Kemal Gani.
Prita has won many accolades including – Best Practices in Public Relations and Communications Profession, awarded by the Institute of Public Relations Malaysia (IPRM) 2005, PERHUMAS Achievement award 2006 (Education category) 2006, and Outstanding Entrepreneur Award 2009 from Asia Pacific Entrepreneur Award 2009. In addition, she has continued to inspire the youth of Indonesia as part of the honorary jury for the selection of Abang None, Koko Cici, Maiden of Tourism and Indonesia’s Young Ambassadors for ASEAN as well as others. She has been actively involved in promoting awareness of green environment as a member of the Advisory Board of the British Council’s Climate Change Project. Prita also founded IDEAL (Indonesia Drama Educators Association) to foster and establish drama education as a profession by offering professional development programmes in arts education, therapy and performance.
The year 2015 was a golden year for Prita as she was selected as Asia Pacific Entrepreneurial Winning Women Ernst & Young – Class 2015 and also became an Executive Board Member Regional Delegate -at- Large (Asia) – Global Alliance For Public Relations & Communication Management. The year ended with a ‘big bang’ when she received an award as the ASEAN Peoples’ Award 2015, Indonesia National Recipient at the ‘27th ASEAN PR Summit’ 2015 KL, Malaysia in November 21, 2015.
Team ABT reached out to her to find out more from her professional journey.
Who is your greatest Inspiration? Why?
My greatest inspiration is my mother she is a very strong woman, very hard working. When my Father died my mother was still at a very young age, she worked while also doing business at the same time. Many of her principles in life became my principle in life too. She is very discipline in managing her time, her household, very discipline in her finances and attitude. She has persistently encouraged me a lot to be responsible to many things and has taught me to be steadfast and compassionate, that is why my daily principles in life is greatly influenced by my late mother whom I misses so much.
What led you in setting up LSPR? How did it all start?
At a very young age I always wanted to be a teacher. Education is one of my keen interest. I used to work as a PR Director and under me I have many trainees, I always teach them about Public Relations, from that moment I found it very interesting to teach young people about PR. Back then I dreamed to have my own school and teach PR as my interest. When I work as a PR Director for an American Businessman who runs an International Fitness Centre. He taught me how to run the business, getting money from all the members and with that system it gave me an idea to run my own business, getting money from the students and managing the business. It started as a training course and then developed into a diploma and become a graduate school of communication, now we even have Post Graduate Programme. And has now braches in Jakarta, Bali and Dubai with our Online Learning Programme.
LSPR is now globally recognized as the leading graduate school of communication in Indonesia, that pioneers on creative excellent programmes, events and activities that have become references for other educational institutions especially in the communication field.
What are the initiatives at LSPR that you are proud of?
The school has a very unique combination of Practical and Theory. It’s all about the concept of fun learning yet disciplined, creative and innovative. We always want to have quality graduates. Like a boutique it is tailored made. Unlike a manufacturing company who produced in bulks on huge mass production, a boutique is more detailed and focused. The quality is more guarded and carefully thought of from the selection of raw materials and the equipment being used is different. Like in LSPR everything is carefully selected from the students to the lecturers and the facilities must always be top of the line, ensuring that the quality is well maintained and the product is of high quality and value.
Tell us about some of the challenges you face, how do you overcome them.
I believe, we cannot always get what we want, all the time. When LSPR was still small and growing, there was a financial challenge, we need money to develop the school. When LSPR has grown bigger the challenge grew as well, the challenge in the selection of good talents to work with, the system, everything has become so complex and also as we grow our competition have grown wider and bigger. In every business there are many challenges and at LSPR we should be able to face the challenges that comes our way. My principle as a leader I always give chance to my generals and my management team to work, I allow them to grow and be able to create something at LSPR, I am not always present at LSPR, I always give them a chance to innovate, achieve something for themselves and build LSPR and that made LSPR to where it is right now. My team has greatly helped me and ensures that the work is well done at LSPR.
What has been your most proud moment? Milestone achieved?
My greatest proud moment is when I gave birth to LSPR but actually many people knows LSPR more than me. My life is very much relevant to LSPR, as the Founder it’s one of my proud moment and I am what I am right now because of LSPR. To have it established for the past 24 years and this year moving up to its 25th Year it still made me amazed and so proud. But of course I have achieved this because I have a winning team, I share the many achievements with them, the students, the proud lecturers, solid employees and staff. And because of all of this I have achieved yet another a milestone that I can share to many ASEAN women.
First I become Asean People Award, then second I was assigned as Global Alliance for PR Management as delegate at large (Asia), then the third, as Young EY Winning the Ernst and Young Winning Women Asia Pacific Class 2015, I gained lots of friends and mentors and it made me a Global Citizen that I can inspire young people and make my country proud as I represent Indonesia in many conferences and talk like for this year they have asked me to share in India so with this experiences I am grateful that I can share to the many women all over the world. Ernst and Young is a series of sharing many stories of successful women and there are many other women who shares the same success and stories which made me more proud to be amongst these women who share the same views, experiences and challenges and we gather together to learn and help each other to overcome the many challenges. It just shows that I am not alone there are other many women out there like me and they all made it successfully and that inspired me even better to do more and achieved more in life as a woman, a mother and an entrepreneur.
If you were to change/relive any one moment, what would that be?
I wish I was able to sing, dance and act like a performer. 🙂
What are your fears and would you like to achieve in the coming years?
What I want to achieve is also one of my fears and that is the challenge of nurturing my children to persuade them to like what I like in the business so the business will be in the same value concept and to incorporate the same culture when it was first started when I hand it over to my children so the legacy of how LSPR started will continue in the coming many more years.