Background
She is the second daughter of the late Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid. She obtained her bachelor degree in design and visual communication from Trisakti University in Jakarta, but upon graduation she went to work as journalist for Australian newspapers: The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. As a journalist, she covered news stories from East Timor and Aceh. For her stories in post-referendum East Timor, she and her team won a Walkley Award for journalism.
When her father was elected as the fourth Indonesian president, she had to quit her journalism job in order to assist her father in his new job. She is known to have been her father's right hand person, as special staff in communication. Upon Wahid's impeachment, she went to pursue master's degree in Harvard's Kennedy School of Government as Mason Fellow. In 2004, upon her return from Boston, she was appointed as the director of the newly-founded Wahid Institute, as political communication advisor to President of Republic Indonesia 2005-2007, a position that she still retains now. She is also actively involved in the National Awakening Party (PKB) as Secretary General.
Greg Barton in The Australian credits her with having played a crucial role in persuading her father of "the extent of military-backed militia violence in East Timor and the culpability of the Indonesian military leadership".
She is married to Dhohir Farisi.
Read more about this topic: Yenny Wahid
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“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
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