Sumiati Gani
Sumiati Gani’s professional background is in the finance industry and in securities companies. Her career includes working with Inter-Pacific Securities in Corporate Finance for 2 years before she later joins PT Samuel Sekuritas Indonesia as Vice President in Equity Division for 6 years. Now she is Vice Treasurer of Yayasan Jantung Indonesia, a role she accepted in order to give something back to the community.
“A lot of programmes that we’re doing at YJI are helping the underprivileged,” Sumiati points out. “I think it’s important to have preventive campaigns that help people understand the dangers of cardiovascular disease and how to avoid it. Most of the problems occur because of unhealthy lifestyles. For example, many teenagers and even children are smoking every day. That’s why YJI, which covers all 33 provinces in Indonesia and has representatives in each city, tries to spread awareness of living a healthy lifestyle such as exercising, having good nutrition, regularly checking your heart and most of all, being happy.”
“During the next five years, we will be making a big effort to send out positive messages that will linger in people’s minds about the benefits of healthy living. Good nutrition, less stress, that’s the way forward. No matter how inconvenient sometimes, we all need to routinely exercise and visit the doctor for check-ups.” She continues, “In the case of unfortunate children who are born with heart defect, they have to undergo at least 2-3x of open heart surgery in their life span that’s why ‘heart matters’ is very complex.”