Dr Ayu is a senior researcher and lecturer at Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia. She is also a senior fellow, as well as the cluster chair/head of the Tourism Cluster of Resilience Development Initiative (RDI). She has more than twenty years of research and teaching experience working on topics related to marketing, small and medium enterprises, gender and business management and has worked with various institutions and clients such as the ASEAN Secretariat, various UN Bodies, The Ministry of Research and Technology Indonesia, World Vision Indonesia, Government of Banten, and Oxfam. She has  published over 20 pieces of research in internationally recognized publications on the aforementioned topics.