Ratna Kartadjoemena ’99 says that Loomis Chaffee “made me more independent, braver to explore new topics, new industries, and be around new circles. I’ve pursued many different interests and started many different initiatives.” 

That she has. Ratna is a co-founder of Bicara Udara, which raises awareness about air-quality issues in Indonesia. She is chair of Paloma Sjahrir Foundation, which supports early-stage impact enterprises in Indonesia. The foundation seeks to connect these enterprises that champion environmental and socials goals with strategic partners and investors. She is an investor and advisor to several startups focused on empowering women, as well as those focused on climate technology. She was a partner for 12 years at Potato Head, a regenerative lifestyle brand focused on hospitality, food and beverage, and entertainment where she helped lead the group’s effort to reduce waste and consumption of resources. 

So many passions. For the past four years Ratna has worked with Bicara Udara co-founders Amalia Ayuningtias and Novita Natalia to educate the Indonesian public about the importance of air quality and to support policy change for clean air.  

“We are mothers concerned about how air pollution damages health during childhood and increases the risk of diseases later in life. Air pollution is a pressing issue in Indonesia's urban areas,” Ratna said. 

A recent study from global health organization Vital Strategies estimates that air pollution in Jakarta potentially causes more than 10,000 deaths and 5,000 hospitalizations for cardiorespiratory diseases each year, along with more than 7,000 adverse outcomes in children.  

“The fight for clean air in Indonesia has made good progress in the last couple of years,” Ratna said. “The citizens have won a lawsuit against the government for air pollution, which has been appealed twice and won again by the citizens. The increase in the number of air-quality sensors providing real-time data to the public via apps has heightened public awareness and emphasized the need for action. Last year, the president called some of his ministers and governors to find solutions. There is now an effort to upgrade our gasoline to meet Euro 4 standards and talk about closing an old power plant. More international organizations are also entering Indonesia to help with the air-pollution problem.” 

She said the issue is manageable but requires a collective effort. 

“Our children can do little to protect themselves or influence air-quality policies,” Ratna said. “So as parents we need to do our part. In our country with a system so decentralized, and government ministries and agencies so siloed, this is not an easy task. Thus far, it has been policy by virality.” 

Trash also has been a huge problem in Indonesia. The New York Times published an article in 2000 about people who tried to make money by picking through trash for recyclables. “Even in the pouring rain, in the middle of the night, they are out scavenging, wearing headlamps to scan a mountain of rotting garbage more than 15 stories high,” the story began. 

The story began for Ratna when she was in middle school and “first became cognizant of the waste problem we have in our country ... but unlike youth today that jumps and solves the problem, at that time I didn’t feel so empowered. I just thought the government, or someone, is supposed to do something. We have mountains of trash in the landfill and in our rivers. Then I went off on my merry way to the U.S. In our Loomis dorm, we had the blue recycling bin, but who knows what happens to that trash and all other types of waste. The trash problem was not in your face, like it is back home, so I forgot about it.” 

At Loomis, Ratna served as a prefect; helped manage the girls lacrosse, field hockey, and basketball teams; and was part of the step team, activities that she said helped her “make friends across a more diverse set of students from different walks of life and cultures.”  

She was in the United States for about 15 years, from her freshman year at Loomis until she moved back to Indonesia in 2011. By then she had a bachelor’s degree in international business from Georgetown University; had a master’s of management in hospitality, real estate finance and investments from Cornell University; and had worked on Ernst & Young’s real estate transaction hospitality team and at Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide. 

“When I was [at Cornell] I took a couple of sustainability classes,” Ratna said. “Then when LEED green building certification began, I got certified as a professional. When I worked on Ernst & Young's real estate transaction hospitality team, I used to be the one asked to write about sustainability in their industry yearly outlooks. Then, when I worked at Starwood, I was on the company’s green team, and also volunteered to help EGBOK Mission, a hotel school in Cambodia upskilling students from remote areas; and at Hot Bread Kitchen, an organization that helps upskill immigrant women with baking skills so that they can work.” 

When she got back to Indonesia in 2011, that problem from her middle school days, all that trash, was worse. She said the landfills went from “mountains to mountain ranges of trash” and rivers had become covered in trash. “I suddenly became obsessed in finding out how to recycle and what ways business can be more environmentally friendly,” Ratna said.  

She started working for Potato Head in 2012, ending her stint in April of this year. In her 12 years there she had various roles, from building the hotel business to working as director of development for the hotel and food and beverage projects. Potato Head has hotels and restaurants in Bali and Jakarta, Indonesia, and in Singapore. She helped develop the company’s “Good Times Do Good” philosophy, which she described as the company value that formed the basis of its sustainability efforts. Ratna discovered a company named Waste4Change, with whom Potato Head would partner in Jakarta.  

“Our restaurants would sort our trash, and Waste4Change would pick it up and process it,” Ratna said. “Organic waste is eaten by black soldier flies, and the maggots become animal feed. The inorganic waste goes to recycling, and any residue goes to a plant that processes the waste into energy used by a local cement company.” 

In 2024 Potato Head became B-Corp certified, which means it met certain social and environmental standards. 

In 2022 Ratna co-founded Paloma Sjahir Foundation (PSF), which she said “aims to build a better ecosystem for impact enterprises. PSF helps these enterprises grow and scale by connecting them with strategic partners and investors.” 

Again, sustainability remains a priority. 

“This year, we explored how to connect food and beverage companies with startups offering sustainable solutions for this industry,” Ratna said. “We managed to help the biggest lifestyle and food and beverage festival in Jakarta become zero waste to landfill.” 

Ratna said the foundation also worked with several food and beverage players, such as Dore and Potato Head, to use Indonesian waste management companies such as Noovoleum (used cooking oil converted into aviation fuel) and Boolet (chopsticks and satay sticks upcycled as furniture). 

“One novel solution came about when CommonGrounds Coffee started speaking about their abundance of coffee waste with Kecipir, a farm-to-table platform,” Ratna said. “Common Grounds’s coffee waste and eggshells are now collected by Kecipir, which adds some organic additives and converts the waste into organic fertilizer for their farmers.”  

Although she said many problems are still unresolved in Indonesia, Ratna’s fondness for her country comes through. She said the country is growing and exciting, and the unresolved challenges mean opportunity. 

“What I like the most about being here is that one can be so entrepreneurial,” Ratna said. “The U.S. is a very mature market, and so anything you do professionally, you can get pigeonholed into something very specific, or you need to pound the pavement and climb the corporate ladder, so to speak. Here, there are just so many opportunities, you can just take it, and in order to make it happen, you have to learn how to do everything. Indonesians are a happy people, and it is a very social place. It is very easy to make friends here and people care about each other.”