Meet Agustinus Tobing | A lifetime traveller & Technocrat

We had the good fortune of connecting with Agustinus Tobing and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Agustinus, what role has risk played in your life or career?
In my opinion, there are always risks in our daily life, not only the BAU we deal everyday, but also when we are asked to make a decision over our career, items we buy, education we pursue and life we choose. I always take a calculated risk in which I still can mitigate that risk by doing extra miles of efforts to achieve the objective. For example, I had a good corporate position when I worked in a top notch life insurance company as the Chief Compliance Officer. It was a strategic position that provides me authority, luxury, and comfort. However, I foresaw that I will not have sustainability on that positions to the reasons of the dynamics of life insurance on the market conduct and regulatory issue which requires me a long working hours, zero life balance, high stress and potential heart or stroke threat to my health. So, I made a difficult choice by pursuing a PhD in Strategic Management in my spare time as the chief compliance officer. I studied every day for 4 years in parallel with that role. I did write lots of papers, interviews for my dissertation, rejections on the publications, and dealt with internal / external pressures as I had to provide family time for my son and daughter. It was impossible at that time to have these two big things in my plate, being a chief compliance officer and completing the PhD study. However, I took another risk by moving to other company, a giant tech company, where I changed my hat from a people manager with 50 staffs, to an individual contributor. It was a calculated risk where I have more time to deal with my study and to keep the smoke in my kitchen with the a slight higher salary. Work hard paid off as I obtained my PhD in time and the degree starts to pay me well by having more roles as Non Executive Directors in several companies. Now, I earned a lot more than what I had as a chief compliance officer, have a very life balance, a good health posture, and of course enjoying what I am doing. It is a calculated risk and provides you more rewards if you do it right. Doing it with the right people, in the right way and the right result will come,

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
It was not an easy path to arrive at this point of my career. I was just an average student in my university and I never had a big dream except to work to survive in the life we are dealing with. However, I switched that mindset after I finished my master degree in Rotterdam, where I learned that life is too beautiful and we must enjoy it including enjoy what we are doing. I identified my passion, in which those passions are governance, risk and compliance (GRC) domains. I have a good interpersonal skills and capability to learn everything very fast. I am easy to mingle with people, to build network, and to earn trust from my employers. In brief, I built my career as external auditor, moved around several banks as risk professionals, and then landed in several insurance companies as Chief Compliance Officer. On my part time, I update my knowledge by teaching in University as adjunct lecturer for GRC subjects. I enjoyed all those roles, specifically teaching where you have your satisfaction when you see the smile from your students when they feel valuable by having or understanding the new knowledge. But when I entered my comfort zone, I became easy to get bored and not really enjoying what I was doing. So, I switched my career to outside domains of GRC where I moved to AWS. That was where I learned everything from the scratch and being an individual contributor. I feel like a new graduate joining a new company where you have to do everything by yourself. You do not have staffs, secretaries, and you are empowered to deliver, to innovate, and to contribute to my country. So, I learn that it is never too late to learn new things. There is never a thing we call comfort zone. We have to keep challenging ourselves, not only to raise the bar of what we achieve, but also to keep learning in this life to make us productive and of course to enjoy life. So, my new brand is: You work to live. You do not live to work.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
If my best friend is visiting Indonesia, I would take him to Bandung, located in West Java, Indonesia. I would take him to have staycation in Hilton Hotel where it is very closed to lots of places to enjoy the food culinary and hangout places. For foods, he should enjoy “lotek”, “pepes”, “bakmi Naripan”, and the traditional cakes. Those foods are the local name for traditional mix vegetable using coconut sauce, traditional fish combined with tofu, and the delicious noodle with the signature taste of your choice. On drink and hangout, I would take him to Braga Permai where we can have lots of choices on the beverages while enjoying the night scenery in Braga where there are lot of perfomances and attractions by the locals. For hang out, we can go to the top of the hills in Bandung we call Dago which provides us a “rooftop view” of Bandung while we can enjoy satay, or soup buntut (oxtail soup) during the night.

But if I am given a choice to spend a long week trip, I would ask him to accompany me to go to London, specifically go to Borough Market to enjoy sweets, traditional foods, and of course the Bradwurst. We both can go to traditional market in Portobello Road or Camden Market to hunt analog or vintage cameras and then followed by hang out in London Bridge while enjoying the London Bridge Kebab. That would be my second ideal plan if he is not visiting Indonesia.

During my visit to an area, I used to make myself “lost” so I can enjoy the local custom, the local foods, learning local language and look for the peculiar souvenir that I would not have in the other areas. Sometime, I will search for the traditional costume like when I wan Vietnam, or I will visit the places that is peculiar, for example the temple, the palace or the place where there were important events occurred in the history. But, I also keep looking for vintage analog cameras in that areas because I am a collector so I have a satisfaction where I can attest that I have a trophy from areas that I visited. For example, I bought vintage cameras in UK, Vietnam, Cambodia, Colombia or Israel. Specific to souvenir, I would look diecasts or figurine that reflecting the areas, for example miniatures of temples, taxi motors, peoples and other souvenirs. I also made a lot of street photography during my visit by taking picture people walking in the streets, homeless people in the street, markets, situations in cafe during lunch time, train stations, transportations and people riding bicycles. All of these will be posted in my IG as the artifacts and for informational purposes to my followers in IG as well.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I would dedicate my shoutout to Erick Stephens, my manager at AWS, who gave me confidence in what I am doing and keep trusting me so I get to this point. He provides me an inspiration that although I make a little change from what I am doing, it can change significantly to other people, especially Indonesia

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