Getting personal: Connie Ang, President Director of Danone Specialized Nutrition Indonesia, explains the challenges women face during the pandemic

As a woman leader, very often you're told you're not feminine enough or you're too feminine, you don't smile enough or you smile too much, or you dress up too much or you don't dress up enough.

I'm Connie. I'm the president director for Danone Specialized Nutrition here in Indonesia.

If you weren’t doing what you’re doing now, what would you be doing? If I wasn't doing what I was doing now, I'll probably be a painter, not a very good one, but I'll be experimenting and quite happy painting.

What is something people might find surprising about you? That I actually have the time to paint every weekend.

What’s the last thing you searched for in Google Search? Let me think. That was probably last night when I was trying to figure out how to cook bamboo shoots.

“In what ways has the pandemic impacted your consumers?” I think during the pandemic, everybody is impacted. Women and children in any pandemic are impacted even more. First of all, if you're a career woman and working, you have to take care of the family, you have to take care of homeschooling and therefore it is very demanding because of that multiple role. And there is also a sector of the society where family may have lost income or lost a part of the income and at the same time, the woman has to take care of the family, and therefore that creates additional burden for her.

During the COVID people were searching a lot. They were searching a lot for health. They were searching for words like immunity a lot. And also during the lockdown, they was searching about homeschooling. They wanted to know about stress because mothers and children were facing stress during this time. So one of the things that we did during this time is really to stay relevant for them. So to provide them with the content, the information that they need.

What is a challenge you think female leaders face today? I think one of the thing is that there is, in the world and also in Indonesia, not enough women in executive positions. As a woman leader, very often you're told you're not feminine enough or you're too feminine, you don't smile enough or you smile too much.

So you're always having to walk that tightrope between expectations and aspiration. Men don't get all those questions all the time or comments all the time. At the same time, I think women are inspired to be role models, women are inspired to do what they do so that more young girls can dream their dreams and have a career and have a multiple role as a mother, as a wife, or as a woman, as a successful career woman if that is what they want.

What’s your best piece of advice for the younger generation? I would say, find out what you really love, spend your time getting really good at it, and then learn, experiment and keep doing it until you continue to be very good at what you love. And then don't stop until you get bored with it. Then you find the next thing you love.