Nani has been working on women empowerment at the grass root level since 1987, starting as a field worker of The Center for Women’s Resources Development (PPSW) – a woman NGO in Indonesia. In PPSW she gained experience as a grass root women organizer, community trainer, facilitator, project coordinator and program manager. She was appointed as the director of PPSW in 1995 and served there until 2000.

In 2001, Nani founded PEKKA (Women Headed Family Empowerment) focusing on empowering female heads of family, the poorest of the poor in Indonesia. PEKKA offered exceptional support to women who head of families—to recognize themselves as capable of making important contributions to society, helping them to create new roles for themselves, individually and collectively.

Nani, leading over 60 PEKKA team members, has accompanied over 60,000 women-headed families in over 3,000 self-help groups across 1,300 villages in 20 of 34 provinces in Indonesia fight for their education, economic, legal, social and political rights.

PEKKA built over 40 community learning centers in different part of Indonesia that serve entire villages, providing sites for adult literacy, vocational training, and early childhood education for grassroots women. Their legal empowerment programs developed paralegal skills to assist village women bring family law and legal identity cases to court and civil registry officials.

PEKKA has also worked assiduously to change discriminatory laws and policies. They drew attention to the status and role of women heads of families as key drivers in efforts to eradicate poverty. PEKKA successfully pressed the government to expand its judicial system to rural areas and fought to obtain legal status for women-headed families, ultimately achieving this goal in 2006.

PEKKA has received several International awards including Best Practice Award Ministry of Finance Japan 2009 and ASEAN Leadership Award 2013.

Alongside her work through PEKKA, Nani co-founded several national networks and NGOs which promote women’s rights and advancing policy reforms for the sector especially in the face of its marginalization in public policy and funding. Among them are ASPPUK (Association of NGOs Working with Women Entrepreneurs and Micro Businesses) on economic justice for women, and ALIMAT; a network of activists and Islamic scholars for a just system for families in the Muslim context.