My Balinese Name
My complete name is I Made Soma. In case, you are not familiar with Balinese names, it’s pronounced EE Ma:dé Soma:. In Balinese culture, “I” is given to a boy indicating a male child. “Made” is given to a second born child. As you can imagine, there are loads of other people in Bali who share this name. For simplicity and to avoid confusion, I go by Soma.
What I do
I describe myself as an educator, an edupreneur, and a lifelong learner. I started my teaching career since I got my Bachelor’s degree in education back in 2012. I worked in two language schools teaching Indonesian and English for foreign speakers. Later on the same year, I joined the Green School Bali and stayed for 5 years. Some positions I held during my time there were high school Indonesian teacher, primary classroom teacher, English teacher, and Indonesian curriculum developer and trainer.
In 2019, after coming back my master study in the United Kingdom, I embarked on an edupreneurship journey. Along with likeminded teacher friends, I founded the Jembatan Bahasa, an Indonesian language school for international learners and JB English, an English training center for international and Indonesian learners. In addition to this, I also work as a part-time lecturer at Mahasaraswati University in Denpasar.
Education
I earned my bachelor’s degree in education majoring in English education from Mahasaraswati University. Then, I continued my master’s degree in project management in Anglia Ruskin University, England.
Hobbies
In my spare time, I enjoy playing badminton, reading, traveling and watching movies.