Businesswoman, author, philanthropist and lawyer, Loida Nicolas-Lewis, does it all. Loida, one of the most successful and richest Filipina women in the world, is the CEO of TLC Beatrice International Holdings Inc., a company whose sales reached over $2 billion in 1996.
TLC Beatrice manufactures and markets food products all around the world. In 1998, it was ranked the 68th largest privately owned company in the United States.
TLC Beatrice is a prime distributor of beverages in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Thailand, the leading manufacturer of potato chips in Ireland and of ice cream in Spain and the Canary Islands.
Loida became the head of TLC in 1994, a year after her husband Reginald F. Lewis, TLC’s first CEO and chairman, died of brain cancer. He was one of the U.S.’s top black entrepreneurs and acquired Beatrice International in 1987.
She is also chairman of the Lewis Family investment firm, and also is chairman and CEO of TLC Beatrice in China, Limited, a Cayman company, which operates retail convenience stores in five major cities in China, and TLC Beatrice Foods located in the Philippines.
She was ranked No. 1 among the “Top 50 Women Business Owners in America” by Working Woman magazine in 1994.
Loida is a graduate of the University of the Philippines College of Law and a cum laude graduate of St. Theresa’s College. She was the first Asian American to pass the American Bar in 1974.
She has written books on U.S. immigration law, including How to Get a Green Card.
Born in the Philippines, she comes from a family of entrepreneurs. Her father started Nicfur, one of the largest furniture companies in the Philippines.
She is currently the national chair of the National Federation of Filipino American Associations.