Biden nominates Fil-Am leader to Millenium Challenge Corporation board

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WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden has nominated Filipino American community leader Loida Nicolas Lewis to serve on Millennium Challenge Corporation’s board of directors.

Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) partners with the world’s poorest countries with a focus on poverty reduction through economic growth.

Lewis was nominated for a three-year term.

Created by the US Congress in January 2004 with strong bipartisan support, MCC partners with the world’s poorest countries that are committed to just and democratic governance, economic freedom and investing in their populations.

MCC provides time-limited grants promoting economic growth, reducing poverty and strengthening institutions. These investments in core infrastructure and policy and institutional reforms are key interventions that are expected to benefit nearly 400 million people across 47 countries.

Lewis is chair and CEO of TLC Beatrice, LLC, a family investment firm. A lawyer by profession, admitted to practice in the Philippines and New York, Lewis was the first Filipino woman to pass the New York bar without attending law school in the United States.

When she won her discrimination case against the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, she integrated the agency and worked as General Attorney in the New York Federal office from 1978 to 1988.

Lewis also served as chair and CEO of TLC Beatrice International, a $2 billion multinational food company with operations across Europe, from 1994-2007.

She assumed its leadership after the death of her husband, attorney and Wall Street financier Reginald F. Lewis, who in 1987 engineered a leveraged buyout for $985 million of Beatrice International Foods, thus becoming the first African American to acquire a billion-dollar company.

Lewis chairs the Reginald F. Lewis Foundation, which is a benefactor of Harvard Law School, the Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture, Virginia State University and the Lewis College in Sorsogon, her hometown in the Philippines.

Lewis is co-founder of several advocacy organizations, including the Asian American Legal Defense & Education Fund, National Federation of Filipino American Associations and US Filipinos for Good Governance. She is a former TOFA board chair and current honorary adviser

Lewis has two daughters and five grandchildren.