I'm Ema, based in The Philippines. I work as a Technical AI Automation Specialist and Automation Operations VA, with a Computer Engineering background. My start in automation wasn't planned. During my final year internship as a Systems Analyst and Data Manager, I was asked to look at a manual, repetitive business process and find a way to make it more efficient. The company also had strict data security policies, so paid or external tools were off the table and AI that time is not that commonly used (imo). I ended up building a custom solution from scratch instead, with no automation background and no budget. That project showed me what automation could actually do for a business, and for the people doing the manual work it replaced. Since then, I've worked across n8n, Make, Zapier, Airtable, Supabase, and Google Apps Script, building systems that handle recurring reporting, automated communication, and data collection/organization across different business processes. My goal here is to connect with an international automation community to broaden what I know beyond my local network, and find clients I can build long-term automation systems for. I want to build a career where I help businesses run more efficiently without sacrificing quality, and reach a point where automation work fully supports my living. Every system I've built so far reinforced that this is the direction I want to keep going. Looking forward to learning from this group and contributing where I can.