Former Chair and CEO of TLC Beatrice International

 

Loida Nicolas Lewis served as Chair and CEO of TLC Beatrice International, a $2 billion multinational food company with operations all across Europe, from 1994-2000.

A lawyer by profession, admitted to practice in the Philippines and New York, Mrs. Lewis was the first Filipino woman to pass the New York bar without attending law school in the United States.

 

Lewis earned a law degree from the University of the Philippines College of Law around 1960 and was admitted to the Philippine Bar in 1968. Lewis was the first Asian American to pass the American Bar (in 1974) without having been educated in the United States. She is eligible to practice law in the Philippines and New York.

She worked for the Law Students Civil Right Research Council in New York in 1969, Manhattan Legal Services from 1970-3, and as an attorney for the Immigration and Naturalization Services from 1979-90.

 

She is an immigration lawyer who has written several books on the subject. She worked for the US government after she successfully sued them for hiring discrimination

 

Lewis is the former National Chairwoman of the National Federation of Filipino American Associations (2002-2006), the largest advocacy group for Filipino Americans in the United States. She is the Chair of US Pinoys for Good Governance. Lewis is also an active board member of the Philippine Development Foundation, a public charity that focuses on building an ecosystem of science and technology-based entrepreneurship and innovation for social and economic development in the Philippines.

 

Lewis is a philanthropist and a leader of the Filipino-American community. She is one of the founders of the National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NaFFAA) an advocacy group in the United States. She is also one of the founders of Asian American Legal Defense & Education Fund (AALDEF), and is the National Chair and Co-Founder of the US Pinoys for Good Governance (USP4GG), organized after the election in May 2010 of Benigno Simeon Aquino III as President of the Philippines

Lewis was recently elected to the Board of Directors of the National Catholic Reporter and the Apollo Theater Foundation.