“Leadership has no gender” is an off-repeated tenet of Lorelie Quiambao Osial, president and chief executive of fuel giant Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp.
That said, Lori is out to break the gender barrier in all fields of endeavor. She is also an ardent “advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion and digital transformation.”
Journalist Joanne Rae Ramirez described Osial as a “size-XS Iraq veteran who bakes, bikes and boxes when not in the high-fueled corridors of power.”
Osial shares her upbringing lessons include squarely confronting her personal and professional challenges. Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak.
“Growing up, I was sheltered but what they ingrained in me is I can be whoever I want to be. And the first barrier for me is actually myself, that it is in me to try new things and to not be afraid to do something different,” she says in the interview with Ramirez.
“If I go through my leadership journey or even my journey in Shell, and in what colleagues have come to ,accept, is that I am a unique individual and I am multi-dimensional. One dimension is my gender, but I am a leader, I am an innovator. I am also a daughter, I am a mother, I am a sibling, I am a wife, and that makes me a whole person. All of those make me the unique whole person that I am,” she says.
On gender equality, Lori says “everyone has to fight for a seat at the table, regardless if you’re male or female.”
“To be honest, it is a question also of which table. Because as a finance person, then it could be that you are fighting for that seat as a finance person. It could be that you are fighting for that seat as an Asian. It could be that you’re fighting for that seat as a female, or in some cases where it is now, as a male. So I think we all do that, to be honest, depending on what table it is, and who else is at the table. It’s your skills, your capabilities, competencies, and the values that you bring,” she explains.
As the top executive of Shell in the Philippines, Osial looks clearly into the corporate road they are taking. “We have been in the Philippines for 107 years, and we aim to continue powering progress, continuing to grow, continuing to innovate and evolve our business for our customers, investors, society, our planet, and to partner with the country in nation-building.”
This feisty woman was appointed to the top Pilipinas Shell post on Dec. 1, 2021, becoming the first female to lead the fuel giant since its incorporation 109 years ago.
She is also the vice president for global finance operations-expenditure which governs Shell’s exposures in more than 50 countries with 80,000-strong workforce across the globe. She had a stint as finance manager for the Basrah Gas Co. in Iraq, reputedly the world’s “largest flare reduction project and one of the toughest external environments within the Shell portfolio.”
Osial graduated cum laude with Bachelor of Science in Accountancy at the Silliman University. She is a certified public accountant and holds a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Western Australia.
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