Meet Mami: An adventure from music to technology | Rebrand Roche

I was born in Tokyo, Japan, and I finished my music education in New Zealand. When I was young, I became obsessed with computers and music. I discovered that these disciplines are creatively intertwined. Technology has made it possible for this to coexist, therefore I quickly learned that it is important to get into technology.

I am an experienced Service Desk Team Lead with a strong background in the information technology and services industry. I have experience in service delivery, service-level agreements (SLA), information technology infrastructure library (ITIL) and IT service management. It is my passion to stay up to date on the latest technology trends and I am a strong professional in the IT field.

I joined Roche as a Senior IT Service Desk Analyst. Although it was a step down from my previous position, I believed Roche would provide a better career advancement for me. I was given an opportunity to lead a project from its conception up to leading its support. Nearly three years later I was promoted to team lead for the Japan team. This reaffirmed my belief that joining Roche was indeed the right choice for my career growth.

Our team consists of Malaysians, Japanese, Chinese and Koreans. All of us have a different background, age and religion, but we respect each other’s differences and make concessions.

I believe that in order to effectively foster a diverse and inclusive environment, we need to move beyond the visible differences. I’m always looking for new ways of learning about my local community, standing up to injustice and encouraging everyone to speak their mind without fear. I want to create an inviting atmosphere for all to feel accepted, respected and heard. This is what I believe Roche is about.

This is my 20th year since I relocated to Malaysia. Yes, I love living in Malaysia! Malaysia has only a one-hour time difference with Japan, which makes it easier when we provide services to Japanese users. Malaysia also has a stable tropical climate all year round, which is nice for people like me who don’t like cold weather.

I joined Roche in 2020 just before the coronavirus broke out. I went to the office for one month, and then a long lockdown began and work from home became the new norm which lasted about two years. Upon joining the team, I started working on a new project to offer support for our business partner in Japan. My role was to do a transition from another company together with one of the managers, and the project went live after six months. I was the main agent to provide support for this account until I took on my current role.

From the start of that project till the go-live date, I had to do everything remotely from home while looking after my two energetic primary school children. It wasn’t an easy journey, but I believe we could make it because not only my manager but also other team members supported me continuously. Now I’m heavily working on the second transition for our business partner to take over full IT support which is scheduled to go live in August this year, and I’m leading a large team with additional 20 colleagues. This is what I’ve been working on since we started providing support. Whenever I communicated with users, I told myself to provide the best possible support, having in my mind that providing a good support now can lead to large-scale support in the coming years. And this is what is happening now!

2020 was the beginning of this project and now it’s ready to go operational on a full scale. I’m very excited and honoured to be a part of this project.

The next five years will be a very interesting time. With the emergence of artificial intelligence and the advanced technology development, I fully intend to forge ahead by arming myself with all the necessary knowledge and information that will benefit both the company and me in order to live a balanced and fulfilling life.