Dwina Soerono, Indonesia
Sustainable Energy, Class of 2018
Name: Dwina Soerono
Age: 26
Hometown: Jakarta, Indonesia
Academic Background: B.A. Economics, McGill University, Canada
Major & Class: Sustainable Energy, Class of 2018
With whom did you intern?
Landsvirkjun, The National Power Company of Iceland. Specifically, I interned in the Department of Business Development.
How did you find your internship opportunity?
Our Program Coordinator at the Iceland School of Energy, Randall Morgan Greene, helped my colleague, Berit Hanna Czock and I acquire this internship. Berit and I share the same background in Economics, and it was great to do an internship together that was parallel to our previous studies.
What project did you work on in your internship?
Our task was to conduct exploratory research on the Social Progress Index (SPI) for the energy sector's impact assessment, specifically in the context of Landsvirkjun best-practices. We did a thorough literature review on impact assessments and the SPI, and held numerous interviews with Landsvirkjun (LV) representatives for a further "deep-dive" study into the company. We interviewed LV representatives from different departments such as Corporate Social Responsibility, Environmental Affairs, Finance, Public Relations and Business Development.
What did you enjoy the most?
We were very fortunate to be able to learn from the expertise in Landsvirkjun. Their professional insights have helped challenge and nourish our holistic understanding of Social Impact Assessment and its potential benefits and challenges on a corporate level. We were also given the chance to participate in “What Works 2017: The International Summit to Advance Social Progress”. I was inspired to learn that many stakeholders - ranging from private investors, non-profit organizations, fellow academia, large corporations – were deeply committed to adopting social progress in their specific domains.
What were your biggest challenges?
The biggest challenge was to select departments that could help us tackle our main question: “How can social impact of development in the energy sector be measured meaningfully?”. Fortunately, we were supported and guided throughout our internship by great supervisors (Berglind Ólafsdóttir, Ríkarður Ríkarðsson and Sylvia Ólafsdóttir). Once selected, it was challenging to create an effective stream of questions for each interviewee as different experts were responsible for different tasks. The key to that is preparation!
How did this internship help your career?
Through this internship, I was given the opportunity to incorporate academia with industry first-hand experiences specific to different departments in Landsvirkjun. Learning the different roles and responsibilities of each department, and witnessing first-hand experience how dedicated they were in executing their different tasks to achieve social progress has taught me a more holistic understanding of how big corporations, such as Landsvirkjun, contribute to the overall economic growth in Iceland. I wish to be able to translate this experience into the line of work/career that I would be pursuing in the near future.
What advice do you have for future students?
Stay curious and ask a lot of questions. These experts have an abundance of knowledge and experience that could further open your horizon and understanding of how the energy sector works in real life. Lastly, don't forget to find the joy your experiences and tasks too – learning is more fun that way!