Reprinted from My Facebook Page
In December 1993, two hours before a board meeting, a Filipina lawyer from Sorsogon called the man running her late husband's company. "Jean, I'm taking over," she told him, according to TIME.
Her name is Loida Nicolas Lewis. The company was TLC Beatrice, a food business that sold more than a billion dollars a year and was known as the biggest Black-owned company in America.
She had never run a company before, and Wall Street expected her to fail.
So how did a girl from Sorsogon end up in that chair?
A GIRL FROM SORSOGON
Loida was born in Sorsogon in 1942, during World War II. Her father built a string of businesses, from construction and furniture to farming and entertainment.
She was the first daughter, after two older brothers. She studied in Manila, at St. Theresa's College and then at the University of the Philippines College of Law.
She passed the Philippine bar in 1968. That same year, she went abroad with her mother.
In New York, a blind date changed her life. He was Reginald F. Lewis, a young Black lawyer fresh out of Harvard Law School.
In her memoir, she says she asked him what it was like to be a Black man in America. His answer was, "I'm international!"
They married in Manila in 1969 and had two daughters, Leslie and Christina.
THE LAWYER THEY WOULDN'T HIRE
In New York, she worked for a civil rights law group and for Manhattan Legal Services.
In 1974, she passed the New York bar. She is often described as the first Asian woman to pass it without going to law school in America.
Then she applied to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, and they turned her down. She sued for discrimination, saying her race, her sex and where she came from were held against her.
She won. The judge ordered the agency to hire her and give her back pay.
She worked there as a lawyer for about ten years, until 1988. She even co-wrote a popular guide called How to Get a Green Card.
I love that part. The office that didn't want her ended up with her writing the book on its paperwork.
THE BILLION-DOLLAR DEAL
Meanwhile, Reginald became a Wall Street dealmaker. In 1987, he bought the overseas food businesses of a company called Beatrice for $985 million, mostly with borrowed money.
He named it TLC Beatrice. It became the biggest Black-owned company in the United States.
Then, in January 1993, the company announced that Reginald had brain cancer.
He died the next day. He was 50.
"When Mr. Lewis died, I knew I would be mother and father to them," she said years later about her girls.
His life story came out in 1995, finished by a journalist from what he had written. It was called Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun?
"JEAN, I'M TAKING OVER"
For about a year, Reginald's company was run by Jean Fugett Jr., a lawyer and former football player. Loida controlled more than half of the stock, and in December 1993 she made that phone call.
By early 1994, she was chairwoman and chief executive. She was now in charge of dozens of companies in more than 30 countries.
TIME reported that Wall Street's smart money thought she would surely flop. She started with the things everyone could see.
She sold the private jet. She got rid of the limousines and other perks.
Then she went after the parts that were losing money. TIME counted 500 jobs cut, including half of the corporate staff, and money-losing businesses closed.
"I don't take any crap," she told TIME. I love that line, coming from a woman TIME also described as scholarly and deeply religious.
In 1994, the company made its first significant profit in three years.
A CHAPTER ENDING
Over the next few years, she sold the company's big pieces, including its French grocery stores. In May 1999, the board approved selling what was left and paying the money to the shareholders.
"A chapter in his life is ending, so it's hard," she told The Baltimore Sun. She said her husband's goal was to make the company worth more to its owners and pay them out, and that she had taken that goal on as her own.
THE GIRL FROM SORSOGON, TODAY
Outside the company, Loida built something else. She helped start the National Federation of Filipino American Associations in 1997, and she helped found the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.
She has led the foundation named after her husband, which has given to schools, universities and museums. In 2023, in her eighties, she published her own memoir.
Its title is Why Should Guys Have All the Fun? She just dropped one word from his.
She is in her eighties now and still speaking. In May 2026, around the Asian Hall of Fame gala in Los Angeles, she told the Asian Journal, "I am a girl from the province of Sorsogon."
At the gala, she told the women in the room, "If you don't know how to do the job, you will learn how to do the job. Don't say 'Oh, I am not ready.' You'll never be ready."
More than thirty years after that phone call, that is still her advice.
Source: TIME, 1996; The Baltimore Sun, 1999; UPI, 1993; International Directory of Company Histories; Black Enterprise; The Filipino Expat; African American Registry; Asian Journal, 2026; Carnegie Corporation of New York; Filipina Women's Network; The FilAm, 2023 →
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