Lessons from the late Elizabeth Sam and Gloria Lee

IN RECENT weeks, two doyens of the banking and finance industry passed on: Gloria Lee, who founded Kim Eng Securities, and banking veteran Elizabeth Sam, a pioneer leader at Singapore’s central bank, and the first woman to sit on the board of a Big Four bank (which, at the time, included the Overseas Union Bank).

Regrettably, neither woman gave many interviews – yet both were veritable founts of wisdom, based on what I culled from our archives. Here’s what I learned from their lives, and the stories told about them:

1) The power of being underestimated

Lee’s cover story is spectacularly minimising: painted as a stewardess-turned-housewife urged by her doctor to stop playing so much golf and get out of the sun, she “scraped together” S$700,000 from savings and a bank loan to buy herself a seat at the Malaysian stock exchange (Singapore’s was still part of it at the time).

In a well-read 1998 interview, “not a clever person” was how she described herself, giving credit for many big decisions behind Kim Eng’s success to her sons, Ronald and Douglas Ooi.

“I love a challenge ... the men just thought we were nitwits, no threat to them at all,” she was quoted as saying.

By “we”, she was referring also to Nancy Lim of Lim & Tan Securities – another pioneer female stockbroker.

She goes on: “It wasn’t difficult being a woman in this industry, because everyone helped me. They thought: ‘Poor thing.’” And of course, she was anything but a “poor thing”.

There is definitely something to learn here – humility, even self-deprecation sometimes, can work in one’s favour. Let others feel sorry for you, especially when you’re starting out somewhere new. Learn the ropes from anyone willing to teach, help, or guide you, and tap their underestimation of you to surprise them with your competence, then surpass their expectations.

2) The gender divide is only as big as you allow it to be

Today, the banking sector is very much more balanced, gender-wise. A 2022 Deloitte analysis shows women hold 44.9 per cent of manager or equivalent titles below senior leadership in financial institutions. In senior management, women hold 24.5 per cent of the roles, and at the C-suite level, they occupy 20.8 per cent of roles – all higher than the Asian averages.

Back then, the gender landscape was very different. But Sam adopted a refreshing attitude.

“I don’t think the banking sector is necessarily male-dominated as such,” she was quoted as saying in her acceptance of the Her World Woman of the Year award in 1997. “If anything, I feel the financial sector is a field where many women have a better chance than average to excel. It is not a field where certain physical attributes are required and therefore there is no physical disadvantage. Women can compete on equal levels, as it were.”

So perhaps it comes down to putting aside any doubts one might have about being the only woman in a team or department – in any industry, really, not just banking – and focusing on being spectacular at the job.

3) Daring, acuity, perseverance, professionalism: traits of success

For Sam, staying professional, always, was key.

“Just because you’re a woman, you should not expect to be treated specially,” she said. “You should be prepared, focused; don’t allow obstacles to discourage you, and most of all, enjoy what you do.”

She was also described as bold and assertive at work, along with adjectives such as “sharp”, “firm” and “aggressive”.

In the case of Lee, one moniker stood out: “Iron Lady”, not unlike Margaret Thatcher.

“I’m an Arian and people born under the sign of Aries are said to be quite tough. I wanted the truth from everyone. I didn’t like people who lied or gambled. I didn’t like to see people trading in their wives’ names, either,” she said in an interview.

Her gruelling hours must have also earned her the nickname. Lee used to work till 3 or 4 am because everything was manual in Kim Eng’s early days. But hard work, no matter how tedious, was “heavenly” to her.

4) Be aware of your weaknesses

One thing that struck me was Lee and Sam’s openness about their weaknesses, despite their tough fronts.

Sam said: “People tend to feel that I’m aloof and sometimes intimidating maybe. What I would like ... is to communicate better with people, to be able to say things that I feel, which I very often don’t say”.

Lee, on the other hand, cited her bluntness as her major weakness when she was managing Kim Eng.

“I was too outspoken. I am not smooth like some people who can smile and say the nice things,” she said. But she felt that her employees took her comments constructively.

“When I was managing, my staff knew that when I told them not to slouch in their seats, for example, I meant for them to improve – I wasn’t picking on them.”

5) It’s okay to be feminine, and still do things that men do

Both Lee and Sam took care of their appearances – especially Sam, who was often at high society events.

Sam was known to be fashionable, sticking mostly to Versace and Chanel suits. But she was also stylish with her long, flowing skirts and flamboyant feathered fascinators. She was always confident about how she dressed and looked, even discussing unabashedly in an interview the aesthetic treatments she underwent to enhance her facial features.

For Lee, the one set of photographs we could find of her showed her ears, neck and fingers adorned with large diamonds. But she also said she is not a “girl’s girl”: “I much prefer the company of men, because they talk business.”

And for all her stylistic flamboyance, Sam is remembered nonetheless for being fiercely professional, and always sharp in her work.

So the big takeaway is that one must be solid at the job – and everything else can come later.

The corporate world of today is more complex than in Lee and Sam’s heyday, but much of the values that shaped who they are, both at work and in life, are still very applicable now. Most of us are unlikely to accumulate the career success and wealth these two ladies did, but they’ve certainly taught me, at least, how to live a full and meaningful life.