Betty Lee: Public relations guru in the right place at the right time

Betty Lee Ching-wan's well-known public relations, marketing and corporate communications career has spanned more than 35 years. Yet, across the varied industries that Lee's society-defining campaigns have worked to promote, she's never once applied for a job. Rather, it's her energy and need to represent the community that has seen her successfully evolve.

"I have enjoyed every part of my career, which has always been a part of my own personal development," she says. "Each stage of my career has been involved with community work. As such, I feel I've been involved with every major stage of Hong Kong's development."

Even during her famed tenure as the head of public relations and publicity at TVB and her involvement with the Miss Hong Kong Pageant during the 1980s, it was Lee who developed the contestants' image with local designers and who started the Miss International Good Will Award - effectively using glamour, fashion design and TV to promote the Hong Kong image abroad.

Prior to this, she worked for the Family Planning Association at a time, during the 1970s, when couples commonly had four or five children.

As head of promotion, she worked on the "Two is Enough" campaign that successfully encouraged parents to assume responsibility and changed mindsets so that a man could still feel "macho" with fewer children.

Fast forward to the hedonistic TV evolution in the 1990s and it was Lee who was behind the campaign that helped shift Hongkongers' attitudes towards paying for their programmes.

"I've always been at the right place at the right time, but more importantly I'm not afraid to go into something I don't know. I am always willing to learn - every day is a learning process," she says.

Lee "retired" at 60 and yet the notion of not working seems lost on someone with so much passion for everything she does.

She says she still feels 30 and wants to defy ageing, "not because I'm afraid, but I don't want to give up just because I am 60".