Business pioneer Loida Lewis on leadership, Filipino American representation

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - Filipino multi-millionaire businesswoman and philanthropist Loida Nicolas Lewis isn’t a mainstream household name the way Bruno Mars and Manny Pacquiao are, but she is a trailblazer in business and leadership.

In an interview with Hawaii News Now, Lewis talks about her journey from Sorsogon, a province at the southern tip of Luzon, Philippines, to the U.S. after graduating from law school in the Philippines.

In 1974, she was the first Asian and Filipino woman to pass the New York bar without attending a U.S. law school. She later sued a federal agency for discrimination and won. Months after her billionaire husband’s death, she took over a multinational company most people expected her to sell.

Now in her 80s, Lewis is still adding chapters to her story. This Filipino American History Month, she shares her journey and says she’s inspired by Hawaii’s leadership in empowering a community she has spent decades trying to organize, where Filipino leaders are more politically visible, than almost anywhere else in the country.

First Filipino attorney for a U.S. government agency

In 1968, the young attorney was working at the Law Students Civil Rights Research Council, when she went on a date with Reginald Lewis. They married in Manila in 1969.

After passing the NY bar, she applied to but was not hired by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), predecessor to the current U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). She sued alleging discrimination. She says the agency was asked to produce records on the 11 positions that were open and never did. “Now in law, if you are asked to produce evidence and you fail to produce it or you don’t want to produce it, it is assumed that it’s against you,” she said. The administrative judge, she says, found she had been discriminated against on the basis of gender, color and national origin, and awarded her three years of back pay.

Lewis says that ruling made her the first Filipina in the continental U.S. to become a general attorney at the agency in 1978. The office grew from 27 attorneys to around 100 at New York’s Federal Plaza. “I want to say I integrated,” she said. She said the award helped her start investing in commercial real estate, and her immigration practice led to a bestselling book “How to Get a Green Card.”

The Lewis name on Wall Street

Her husband Reginald Lewis was a Harvard Law graduate and acquired Beatrice International Foods for $985 million, a package of 64 businesses in 31 countries. TLC Beatrice International became the first Black-owned American company to reach a billion dollars in sales.

When he died of brain cancer in 1993, Loida Lewis took over as chair and CEO, and led the company through 2000. Her late husband’s memoir carries the title that still defines how many people remember him: Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun?

“I was just a basket case right after he died,” she recalled. Six months later, she took over a company she says was close to bankruptcy: half its business was ice cream, and the summer of 1993 was rainy across Europe. She cut the corporate office from 30 employees to 12, shrank it from 35,000 square feet to 10,000 and sold the company plane.

By her account, sales rose from $1.5 billion to $2.2 billion by the time she sold the business. Her formula: “you reduce expenses, increase your income, and that’s really what I did.”

Her advice to anyone suddenly in charge: “Just surround yourself with people, people better than you.”

Hawaii and future generations of Filipino leaders

Lewis now chairs family investment firm TLC Beatrice and the Reginald F. Lewis Foundation and co-founded the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NaFFAA) and U.S. Pinoys for Good Governance. She hosts a podcast launched in 2024 continues to publish books about her journey, including her latest, “Look Younger When You’re Older.”

“No Botox, no surgery, because this is what 80 should look like,” she said.

She applauds Hawaii’s leadership in elevating Filipino voices to the national stage. Filipinos make up roughly a quarter of the state’s population, and Filipino Americans hold more seats in the state legislature than any other state. NaFFAA was founded to increase Filipino representation in the halls of power.

“You are the first one to elect a Filipino-American as governor of Hawaii,” she said, referring to Benjamin Cayetano, elected in 1994.

She offered her own explanation for why the continental U.S. has lagged. “Because Filipino Americans, because those who can vote are not really concerned about politics. What they’re concerned is earning a good living, and for those who are, you know, here just to work, it’s to send money back home,” she said.

The cost, she argued, is being left out of the room. “If we as Filipino Americans are not a member, are not on the table, we are the menu,” she said.

Lewis says it comes down to purpose. “Have a purpose in your life, and then you’ll have joy,” she said.