Women at the Top - Driven

Jun 27, 2010 (with thanks to Sunday Times)
WOMEN AT THE TOP
Everything apart from family just 'a hobby'
Achieving work-life balance is a constant challenge for women in the workforce. In this new six-part series in Think, some of Singapore's most outstanding women corporate honchos talk about success, leadership and juggling career and family. We kick off with Lee Suet Fern, senior director of Stamford Law Corporation.
By Wong Kim Hoh, Senior Writer

When The Sunday Times e-mailed Mrs Lee Suet Fern for an interview, her reply - rather aptly for a lawyer - came with a caveat.
She would oblige if this writer did not mind her laughing a lot.

And so she does. The founder of Stamford Law Corporation giggles, chortles and even lets rip a few hearty guffaws throughout our two-hour interview.
We're sitting in a conference room at her office on the 32nd floor of Republic Plaza in Raffles Place. From the window, one can see workers beavering away at Ocean Financial Centre along Collyer Quay.
The building, when completed, will be Stamford Law's new address.
'We need a lot more space; we're almost sitting on top of each other at the back. We're like a sweat shop,' she jokes.
Mrs Lee hopes to get a designer to do something 'really pretty' with the new office but 'the back will still be a sweat shop'.
'We've got to make money, you know,' she whispers conspiratorially before breaking into peals of girlish laughter.

Mrs Lee, 52, is joking of course but there is no doubt the law firm she started 10 years ago is doing well. Stamford Law began with a staff of about 20 in 2000 but now has a headcount of about 100.
She says: 'However, like Singapore, we are not in the size game. Singapore could never try to beat China in population numbers or size of nation.'
There are, she adds, firms which position themselves as 'volume leaders' in the legal market today.
'We position ourselves as 'thought leaders' so our value proposition, like Singapore's, is a completely different one. We punch well above our weight,' she says of her firm which has carved out a strong reputation, especially in M&A (mergers and acquisitions) and corporate markets work.
Earlier this year, Stamford Law beat out much larger and older rivals to be named National Law Firm of the Year 2010 by the International Financial Law Review (IFLR). It also received awards for M&A Deals of the Year at the IFLR Asia Awards in Hong Kong.
She is, naturally, chuffed about the achievements.
Mrs Lee - who graduated with a Double First Tripos in Law from Cambridge University in 1980 - claims starting up a law firm was not part of her game plan.
Before founding Stamford Law where she is now senior director, she worked in law firms Lee & Lee, Norton Rose and Wong Partnership.

'First and foremost, I'm a wife and mother, and whatever I do outside of that is a hobby,' says the lawyer who is married to Fraser & Neave chairman Lee Hsien Yang, the younger son of Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew and the brother of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. The couple have three sons, aged between 15 and 25.
'But sometimes, some hobbies get a bit out of hand, get a life of their own and that's a bit of where I am at the moment,' she says.

She did not, she insists, have a 'vision' except 'to have a firm that undertook top quality work and to do that work with huge passion'.
Articulate and witty, Mrs Lee - who was a debater in National Junior College - likes to preface her answers with her own questions.
'Are we looking to be the biggest firm in town? That has never been an aspiration. Do we want to be the best? Yes, of course we do. And do we want to be profitable? Yes, we do.'
She explains why: 'I'm conscious that we employ a lot more people besides lawyers. We have accountants, HR staff, paralegals, secretaries and I'm conscious we need to stay very profitable because people have mortgages to pay and families to feed. I'm conscious that it's a huge responsibility.'

To be the best means not compromising, she says.
'There are times when people shoot for work which just merits a pass mark. That's not work which I would send out. It has to be a star,' she says, eyes flashing.
With great candour, she adds: 'And for that reason, I'm not a terribly popular person because I'm prepared to say, 'More research, more work, redo.''
That is why she looks out for lawyers who are 'hungry' and have 'fire in their bellies'.
If there was one adjective she would use on herself, it would be 'driven'.

She laughs when asked where her drive comes from.
'Does it have to come from anybody? I can be naturally wacko, you know,' quips Mrs Lee, one of four children of well-known economics professor Lim Chong Yah and his wife, a former teacher.
It helps, she says, that she's very, very good at hard work.
'I'm not ashamed and afraid to work really hard and I'm not afraid to say people know I work hard,' she says.
'And I do. I can work late, early, pull all-nighters, and that's the way I've always been.'
Not that she's a masochist, she hastens to add. She has wondered, many a time, why she's still up at 3am going through legal drafts when she's dying for some sleep.
'But quite often to achieve, you need a preparedness to take a delayed gratification, and that I have. I can slog night after night, day after day to take a great outcome in the distance,' says the lawyer who was given the inaugural Mondial Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in the legal sector by Asian Legal Business, a leading legal publication, in 2007.

Work may keep her awake at night but glass ceilings and gender stereotyping do not.
'It's true that in anything you do, the higher you move up the ranks, the fewer women there are. And it's true that sometimes you feel like it's a boys' club out there,' she says.
'But it doesn't bother me at all. Having said that, my partners think I'm a man in disguise,' she says as she throws her head back with a throaty laugh.

She turns serious.
Success has nothing to do with gender, she says.
'It has to do with whether you are good and whether you're prepared to work harder than the next person. And whether you make it to a leadership position depends on whether you're prepared to lead. Leadership, as many people will tell you, is actually to serve.'
While she is all for striking a work-life balance and Stamford Law Corporation has won the Singapore Family Friendly Employer award, she says sacrifices are inevitable if a person wants to make it to the top.
'You do need to be prepared to really run extremely hard. You can't get it part-time, or if you want to do a whole bunch of other things,' she says.
Asked how she juggles work and family, she says without hesitating: 'My first job is my family.'
'But,' she adds, 'I also realised quite early on that I didn't have it in me to be the kind of mother some other mothers are.'
She's referring to mothers who sit down to supervise their children's homework or assessment sheets, and take leave to coach them for their exams.
'I don't even know what assessment sheets look like. But do I care? Of course, I do, enormously. I care to make a difference.'
So she teaches her sons to be motivated and focused, to think and address their work strategically.
For instance, she taught her eldest son Shengwu - a master's student in Oxford University who was crowned the world's best debater earlier this year at the World Universities Debating Championships in Turkey - that 'studying, like much of what we do in life, is an act of will'.
'We do it because we decide to do it, even though it's painful. So you put that book in front of you and you decide you will be 100, 200 per cent right into that. You're there and your mind is engaged and you're excited by what you're reading. It's almost like being in the zone.'
She describes her approach to raising her three sons as 'very male'.
'My primary objective is whatever time I have, I want to have fun with them. I want to have good experiences and good memories and good relationships with them. That is a huge priority,' she says.
However, she takes great pains to emphasise that 'it's difficult to achieve a lot out there if you don't have the support of your partner and it works either way'.
'And I couldn't have done even a fraction of what I've done without his encouragement and support all these years,' says the lawyer who describes her husband as a hands-on father and a very good cook.

Mrs Lee joined the global boardroom of insurance giant AXA earlier this year. She also chairs the Asian Civilisations Museum board and is a member of the advisory board to the Law School at the Singapore Management University.
Asked what she would have become if she hadn't gone into law, she quips: 'I seriously considered being a hairdresser. I'm very good with hair, I do my own and I cut my husband's.
'I also think I could have been a very good doctor or surgeon. I think I could have coped with hospital politics, stabbing in the back. I can stab too,' she says, chortling.
'We're not necessarily just cut out for one thing but for many of us, we just end up doing that one thing. But we can decide we are just going to be darn good at whatever life throws up.'