Yada Piyajomkwan has built her career around expanding access — to capital markets, to opportunity, and to leadership. After stints at McKinsey & Company and Unilever, she arrived at the GSB. Then, the year she graduated, Yada and classmate Anderson Sumarli, MBA ’19, founded Jakarta–based online brokerage Ajaib with a clear mission: to make investing simple, affordable, and accessible for first-time investors. Within a year, Ajaib had captured a significant share of Indonesia’s mutual fund market; within two, it had secured a brokerage license, launched digital stock trading, and become one of the country’s largest platforms by transaction volume. It achieved unicorn status in 2021, reaching a $1 billion valuation in record time, and now serves millions of new investors.
At the heart of Ajaib’s rapid growth is Yada’s product vision. She and her team have built a stock trading app that’s intuitive for first-time investors yet robust enough to drive continuous learning. It offers built-in financial education, a streamlined account setup process, and support for commonly used channels. Drawing on her Silicon Valley experience, Yada has also fostered a product and engineering culture that prioritizes speed, ownership, innovation, and user obsession — a rarity in the region, according to Anderson. “She changed how technology organizations operate in Southeast Asia,” he says, noting that she’s one of only two women to co-found a unicorn there.
Most importantly, Yada is deeply committed to creating new pathways for others. She has championed talent development across Ajaib, advocating for broader representation at the leadership and board levels. Outside of work, when she’s not hiking or diving, she mentors other women through organizations like the UNHCR’s Leading Women Fund and She Loves Tech. In 2020, Yada’s efforts earned her a spot on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list. “Yada has shown what it means to lead with principle and persistence — changing lives through financial access, changing organizations through culture, and changing the world by opening doors for the next generation of female founders in Southeast Asia,” says Anderson.
