Roslyn Car­ring­ton

"I take pride in what­ev­er I'm do­ing," says An­gela Lee Loy. "I nev­er turn away from work." Her com­pa­ny, Aegis Busi­ness So­lu­tions Lim­it­ed, pro­vides ser­vices rang­ing from ac­count­ing and fi­nance to hu­man re­source and or­gan­i­sa­tion con­sult­ing. She re­cent­ly ac­quired Eve An­der­son As­so­ciates, a com­ple­men­tary re­cruit­ment and HR sup­port com­pa­ny, and per­forms au­dits un­der an­oth­er of her busi­ness­es, Aegis and Com­pa­ny. For­mer­ly an ad­vi­so­ry part­ner at Price Wa­ter­house, she de­vel­oped and grew un­der the men­tor­ship of in­dus­try greats such as Fer­di­nand De Ver­teuil, Ge­of­frey Smith, David Ear­le, Patrick Top­pin, Pe­ter Gan­teaume, Richard Young and Judy Chang. "I worked with dif­fer­ent peo­ple, but all had dif­fer­ent skills. I learned from each of them." Though Lee Loy is a grad­u­ate of St Joseph's Con­vent, she nev­er thought of her­self as a 'brain'. "I nev­er was high up in tests, but I worked hard. You don't have to be the braini­est. That was the ba­sis of my de­ter­mi­na­tion."

All the brains in the world don't mat­ter, she ex­plains, if you don't have the right at­ti­tude... and with the right at­ti­tude, you don't re­al­ly need all the brains in the world. Her will­ing­ness to learn from do­ing even the most me­nial of tasks be­came her strength. "If you put me to sharp­en your pen­cils, I'd make sure they were very sharp." One of the best pro­fes­sion­al lessons she ever learned was be­ing hand­ed a grimy box of oil-stained doc­u­ments be­long­ing to an au­to me­chan­ic, and be­ing told to pro­duce ac­counts from them. "It could be bor­ing stuff, but I al­ways made it a chal­lenge." Al­though to­day women in au­dit­ing and ac­count­ing are more the norm than the ex­cep­tion, she re­calls her ad­ven­tures when she first start­ed out, a time when her pres­ence raised more than a few eye­brows. Weigh­ing less than 100 pounds and look­ing like a school­girl, even in her ear­ly thir­ties she cer­tain­ly didn't look the part of part­ner, and she is full of tales about se­nior ex­ec­u­tives un­der her au­dits who thought they could stare her down... and lost. Nev­er­the­less, de­spite her skills and ex­pe­ri­ence, there were times when she was forced in­to the em­bar­rass­ing po­si­tion of hav­ing to meet clients in the com­pa­ny of a male 'front', whose sole pur­pose was to al­lay fears that this 'lit­tle girl' didn't know what she was about. She tells the tale of a ma­jor re­al es­tate deal on the west­ern penin­su­la which on­ly went through be­cause of her quick think­ing and in­no­va­tion. "It was on­ly af­ter that that the client-a large con­glom­er­ate-be­lieved I did have a brain in my head."

Lee Loy doesn't feel that this tac­tic was tan­ta­mount to sell­ing out her sex. "You have to know what you need to do and what you don't. Once I did it, there was no doubt as to my ca­pa­bil­i­ties. I had to have a strat­e­gy to get in there." But by and large she en­joyed flaunt­ing her fem­i­nin­i­ty, re­fus­ing to al­low the man's world she was part of to turn her in­to a man. "I wore pas­tels; al­ways dress­es, nev­er suits. You couldn't mis­take that I was fe­male." Form­ing her com­pa­ny in 2001 was a leap of faith, but she knew there was a niche she could fill. Her hus­band, Ian Lee, was a lit­tle less cer­tain. "He couldn't sleep that night. He thought I was mad." Much to the hor­ror of her col­leagues, she even left the coun­try mere days af­ter found­ing Aegis, as­sert­ing with a shrug that if the com­pa­ny would fall with­in days if she were not here, she shouldn't have found­ed it in the first place. The fact that Aegis is now per­ceived as stand­ing shoul­der to shoul­der with the largest in­ter­na­tion­al firms in the coun­try is proof enough that her in­stinct was dead on the mon­ey. "We've built a very good brand," she says. "I like my com­pa­ny; it's very fam­i­ly ori­ent­ed, and I don't ever want to lose that. You spend so much of your time where you work, you might as well en­joy what you're do­ing. Some days might bring you more headache than you would like, but...." She laughs off the rest. Lee Loy is al­so a for­mer Chair­man of the Na­tion­al AIDS Co-or­di­nat­ing Com­mit­tee, and be­moans its re­cent dis­so­lu­tion. "We lost ex­cel­lent in­sti­tu­tion­al mem­o­ry." She's hop­ing to see such a valu­able in­sti­tu­tion pick it­self up and dust it­self off again. She cred­its her sup­port sys­tem, her fam­i­ly, men­tors and col­leagues for her suc­cess. "I have tremen­dous peo­ple on both sides. It makes your life easy." As a woman at the top of her game, her ad­vice to oth­ers is to be true to them­selves. "Speak it as you see it. Sin­cer­i­ty and gen­uine­ness are im­por­tant, be­cause peo­ple will see if you are be­ing false. If you make a mis­take, own up and move on. Give praise to the Man above... wher­ev­er you are in life is thanks to Him."