The story of a working mother who studied long after her two daughters thought she should be asleep
Every evening, Winarni Gulton came home from a full day at Indonesia’s state-owned forestry enterprise, took care of her family, and then opened her laptop to study. She had given herself one hour; that was all she had, and she had decided it was enough.
“I told them: this is our future,” she says, of the nights her daughters would find her still at her desk, still studying, long after they thought she should be sleeping.
Winarni joined Perhutani in 2009 as a staff member. By the time she enrolled in the Doctor of Business Administration program in 2023, she had worked her way into a managerial role. Her company supported her decision — not only with encouragement, but with funding. Ten months into the program, before she had graduated, before the research was complete, they promoted her to Head of the General Affairs Department.
The timing was not coincidental. Her dissertation examined organizational culture at Perhutani — the very institution she was managing — and what emerged from it was immediately applicable. Systems she built from her research delivered 35% operational efficiency across budget regulation and contract management. When her colleagues asked how she had improved the way things worked, her answer was direct: “I learned it from my DBA.”
The online DBA is built for working professionals — people who cannot suspend their careers for three to five years of full-time academic study. Winarni studied around her work, not instead of it, and produced research that her organization adopted before she had even walked across the stage.
Her daughters, watching their mother study late into the night for three years, reached their own conclusions. At a formal event where colleagues called her a doctor for the first time, they turned to her and said she looked different. She looked, they said, like an extraordinary woman.
“We must be the role model,” Winarni says. “They will see the difference.”
Winarni Gulton completed the Doctor of Business Administration through Golden Gate University’s online DBA program — a fully accredited, fully online doctorate for working professionals.
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