More than the sum of talent and hard work
By Nerilyn Tenorio
Editor in Chief
“Loida Lewis is an example to us all of how, in the face of devastating loss and countless obstacles, enduring perseverance and faith can lift us to achieve our highest purpose. With a story filled with mesmerizing highs, heart-wrenching lows and a scintillating romance, Lewis’ true gift to readers is sharing her map for success in the business world.”
— Robert F. Smith, philanthropist and founder, chairman and CEO of Vista Equity Partners, from a review of Loida N. Lewis’s book Why Should Guys Have All the Fun?
Lawyer. Businesswoman. Civic leader. Motivational speaker. Author. Mother. Her husband’s lover.
Every once in a while we meet an extraordinary person who makes us think Divine Providence must be at work in someone’s life. Consider this:
When a woman snaps back from a paralyzing depression over a devastating loss of a loved one, and lifts an inherited billion-dollar business empire out of the doldrums before mounting a remarkable corporate liquidation feat, we ask: Could there be something beyond the sum of talent and hard work that pulls that off? What lies beneath the brokenness that propels the human spirit to bounce back, vanquish grief and emerge a victorious strategist out of personal and corporate crises?
Six months after coming to grips with the untimely demise of her husband Reginald Lewis and the burgeoning debt of the $1.8 billion international food conglomerate he left behind in 1993 as recession was ravaging Europe, Loida Nicolas Lewis gathered all her wit, grit and the best talents around her to save debt-choking, cash-hemorrhaging TLC Beatrice International Holdings from a slow, painful death.
By her second year as chairwoman-CEO of TLC Beatrice in 1995, she had reduced overhead expenses to $13 million from $20 million and boosted net sales to $2 billion from $1.8 billion.
The rest, as they say, is history — a series of brilliant negotiations and settlement of a $350 million debt through further pruning of nonperforming assets, and then a put option for a major cashflow-strong French subsidiary that later enabled Loida and her team to deliver to creditors and stakeholders a neatly rewarding liquidation process for TLC Beatrice.
“I learned a lot from my husband,” the prominent Nicolas-Lewis figure said humbly to this writer in a quiet side interview with Malaya Business Insight on the night she was honored by the Asian Consulting Group (ACG) recently. The event dubbed “Honoring Excellence: An Exclusive Welcome Dinner for Loida Nicolas Lewis” was held with a small select group of entrepreneurs at a posh dining spot in Bonifacio Global City during a recent Manila visit from New York where she has been based.
“I held on to his guiding principle in business as to what is more important: Create wealth for the stakeholders, rather than keep on building a bigger empire,” she said.
Passionate conquests
What should be surprising then about the famous reference to Loida Nicolas Lewis as the first Asian woman to become the owner and chief executive of a billion-dollar business empire in the United States? Is it any wonder that she is also the first Asian woman to pass the New York Bar Exam (NYBE) without having studied in any US law school?
Through her life journey — from Sorsogon, southeast Luzon, where she was born to affluent entrepreneural parents in 1942, to the University of the Philippines in the capital city in the ‘60s when she obtained her law degree with honors, and then to New York, USA, where she fully blossomed into a woman, wife, mother, top-notch lawyer and corporate powerhouse — Loida has always manifested undeterred perseverance in pursuit of excellence and victory.
In what was going to be one of her magnificent early triumphs after passing the New York Bar, she applied for a position among the 11 attorney openings at the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) office in Manhattan in 1975.
While she anxiously waited for the employer’s response, she immersed herself in lawyering work at a New York law firm representing the rights of foreigners being processed through the US immigration system. It took one long year before she received a brief letter from the INS saying she was not one of the 11 selected for the vacant posts. No explanation was given.*
She sued the INS, “accusing the agency of discrimination based on national origin, race and gender.”* Three long years dragged on before an administrative hearing was finally scheduled for the case. She presented her credentials against the 11 others who were chosen. The judge ruled in her favor, especially after the INS failed to produce the employment documents of those who were hired for the posts.
In that twist of fate, she became an INS lawyer, and more. She was “awarded three years of back pay, two months’ worth of vacation and one month of combined sick leave and personal leave,” as stated in her memoire Why Should Guys Have All the Fun? (WSGHALF)*
The Lewises’ fortune was then at a point of taking off as the power couple kept finding opportunities for wealth creation in various industries, including real estate. Inevitably the Alpha male and Alpha female in them took turns impressing each other with their strategic moves.
The result: “I see it in little things we’re starting to do: our recent impromptu vacation in St. Thomas; the white convertible 450 SL Mercedes sportster Reginald bought himself after we returned; the fact that we’ve moved upstairs into the triplex section of our five-story Manhattan brownstone and now rent out the first-floor duplex below us.”*
Soon, she says in the book*, “my Filipino friends are starting to notice my family’s metamorphosis… I’m starting to hear praise and even admiration directed toward my soulmate.”
On her own, Loida had also been making great strides, conquest upon conquest, her competitive spirit proving to be inextinguishable.
In her own words: “Type As have a hard time shutting off their competitive instincts. I can vouch for this, having been a valedictorian, cum laude graduate and student council leader.”*(WSGHALF)
From that same book, this writer also gathers that the same Loida that had led the sales turnaround at TLC Beatrice and the eventual winding down of the company toward the latter part of her business career was far from thinking of retirement.
At the age of 57, she enrolled in a management class at Harvard Business School because, as she said in her loidalewis.com, “I wanted to improve my management skills. But the other reason is that my husband, daughters, and two sons-in-law all have Harvard diplomas. The years have not dulled my competitive streak, in the least, and I wanted to have a Harvard certificate, too.”
Homeland sentiment
Turning her eyes back to her roots as she was asked what her homeland was currently facing as its biggest challenge, she replied with sadness on her face: “As voters, Filipinos are generally informed through social media. And unfortunately, social media do not necessarily respect the principles of journalism. We see how often they could be posting distorted facts and readers who are dependent on social media for news could easily take their word for the truth.”
The biggest challenge she sees Filipinos are currently facing as a nation is corruption in the context of poverty among the people. She was making an effort to carefully mince her words, but her face showed flagging confidence in the prospect of resisting corruption in the face of poverty for many Filipino families.
“We are a capitalist nation — but majority of our people are in so much poverty. And so here, Money is King,” she said, adding, “the media, the journalism press have to balance their reporting — they have the duty to report the truth.”
Does she see hope for a better Philippines on the horizon?
“There will be hope when Filipinos as a people choose to stand for what they know is the truth. They must vote for leaders who truly care for this country, people with integrity, not corrupt but have the interest of the Filipino at heart,” she said.
Legacy: ‘A woman who loves and serves’
Among the many accolades attached to her name, the New-York based Filipina — now chairwoman of the Reginald F. Lewis Foundation, mother of two fully grown and also Harvard educated children Leslie and Christina, and faithful lover of her husband even beyond his death — prefers to be known as the “Woman who loves and serves.”
“I always use my mind, but in the end I follow my heart,” she said.
Now in her early 80s, she has a trove of nuggets of wisdom she picked up along the way and can share with the present and future generations of leaders who are in pursuit of truth and excellence.
Topmost is “women can be effective leaders without emulating the negative behaviors often exhibited by powerful men.”
“Second, when setting goals in life, be flexible. I was supposed to be either a nun or a public servant, which would include becoming a member of the Philippine Senate. Falling in love was the farthest thing in my mind. Then came along Reginald F. Lewis.”
Loida’s detour from a childhood fascination for being a nun someday to a New York-based legal and corporate powerhouse, now philanthropist and civic leader, lends much credence to the idea of divine intervention making beneficent designs for one’s own destiny.
And as she bows to the wisdom and sovereignty of God over her life, she might have also quoted His word through the prophet Isaiah in 55:9 “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.”
