Success from flourishing and failing

Initially shy and unsure of herself, Jennifer Susanto flourished at AUT, presenting work at two exhibitions in Sweden, becoming an industrial design peer mentor, creating start-up Foodscrapz, landing two design roles and gaining overall achievement for the AUT Edge Award.

“Uni is a place where you can fail, or you can flourish – or do both. I learned to celebrate my successes while learning from my failures,” says AUT alumna Jennifer Susanto, who is now a designer at ThinkPlace three days a week, while working for a start up in AI the other two days.

Jennifer’s self-belief grew over time at university. When she began at AUT, she was quite shy, kept to herself, and worried about being judged by others. But once she decided to push outside her comfort zone and try new things, everything changed.

By the end of her design degree Jennifer had landed two design roles in New Zealand, presented her work at two exhibitions in Sweden, had three projects recognised at New Zealand’s Best Design awards, had become an industrial design peer mentor and won the overall achievement prize for the AUT Edge Award.

On graduating she started working at ThinkPlace - a design for social impact agency.

“I love designing with diverse people and places and I’ve especially loved working closely with people of all levels of communities from families to organisations to local councils. It is an incredible experience.”

Learning to flourish

Jennifer says two opportunities at AUT made the difference to her outlook - the AUT Edge Award and the AUT X-Challenge.

“Through the award workshops, I learned it was okay if others didn’t agree with me or if I didn’t agree with them. Although the courage to express my opinion felt uncomfortable at first, I learnt that speaking my beliefs prompted more interesting discussions where everyone could share their ideas and thus reflect and develop on our values more deeply.”

Jennifer started to realise that by expanding her own capabilities she could help others expand theirs too. This was apparent, for example, when she became the first female executive of the AUT Startup Club, where she facilitated workshops and events that encouraged students, including young women and mothers, to develop their ideas and gain the confidence to explore pathways of entrepreneurship.

One of her most significant achievements was creating her own startup – Foodscrapz, which offered students easy, cheap and nutritious recipes on Instagram, along with free weekly cooking sessions.

The idea manifested when she noticed the amount of junk food students were eating on campus. Instant noodle pots, candy wrappers and burger wrappers overflowed the bins every day. After discussing her observations with her peers, she realised many students had just moved out of home and didn’t know how to cook and felt too busy to put effort into maintaining a healthy diet.

“I realised we didn’t know how to change our eating habits because we had no idea how to. Cooking seemed hard and food shopping felt daunting. We all knew that our habits weren’t very healthy, but without any relatable or accessible motivation to change, there was just no reason to.”

Her musing turned into the perfect idea to enter a startup for the AUT X Challenge. When her idea was accepted into the accelerator programme Jennifer’s concept became a reality. Over the 12 weeks her FoodScrapz Instagram account of recipes and tips not only established 12 food partnerships with organisations across Aotearoa but reached around 150,000 viewers globally. The free weekly cooking sessions, funded and facilitated by AUT’s recreation centre, attracted a regular group of students who were excited to share their newfound recipes and food shopping tips with their friends, flatmates and families.

Support of Employability and Careers

Now working as a designer Jennifer says she’s very thankful she decided to push herself to overcome her shyness in her first year at AUT and have the courage to explore new experiences. She would encourage other students to engage with AUT’s employability and careers services.

“I think it is cool that there is a team that you can build up a relationship with and get support from. University can be difficult to navigate, and I found the Employability Lab team gave me a safe place to find the connections and resources I needed to learn and grow.”

She recalls how embarrassed she was at her first networking event when she was asked to talk about herself.

“That question, ‘Tell me about yourself’. I felt paralysed, not knowing how much or how little to say in fear of judgement or sounding like I was bragging. What are you meant to do? I can’t remember what I said, just the overwhelming dread and embarrassment.”

She overcame that dread by attending an elevator pitch workshop through Employability and Careers where she reflected on her personal qualities and found that imagining herself putting on a “confidence cap,” made it easier for her to talk about herself.

“I was surprised at how confident I could sound, and I started to realise people were genuinely interested in what I had to share about myself.”

Jennifer’s networking skills helped her gain two jobs after a design networking event, one at Blender Design and one at Clark Bardsley Design. Both those experiences helped her successfully apply for her current graduate designer role at Thinkplace.

As she puts it…

“My university studies have provided me with all the practical knowledge to succeed as a designer, and the AUT Edge Award has given me the soft skills to trust myself to succeed.

There is a diverse network of people you cross paths with at university unlike anywhere else or any other time in your life. Building relationships at university can create a lot of future opportunities and relationships that will support in ways that you didn’t know you needed.”

Want to know more about AUT Edge Award or Employability and Careers?

AUT Edge Award (and postgraduate Beyond AUT Award) are run by the AUT Employability and Careers team.  To find out more about the awards, email AUT Employability Award specialist Horowai Broederlow (autedge@aut.ac.nz) or go to Elab Online (elab.aut.ac.nz) and book into an introductory workshop.

To get help with job search, CV and cover letter, networking, career decision making etc, please book an appointment or workshop at Elab Online. (elab.aut.ac.nz) Workshops can be done online or in person at the Employability Lab at WA202.