Anna Lee: From professional services to Flybuys CEO
Anna Lee, CEO of Flybuys, shares her key leadership lessons and career insights about personal purpose, self-reflection and navigating digital transformation
Making customers and members the core of business decisions has defined Anna Lee’s journey to CEO of loyalty business Flybuys – from professional services to retail, finance to operations and beyond – but it’s the universal leadership skills she’s acquired along the way that have enabled her success, according to the UNSW alumna.
Talking about her nearly three-decade career in finance and management during her appearance at UNSW Business School’s latest Meet the CEO event, Ms Lee highlighted the power of personal purpose. Speaking of her own journey of perseverance and resilience, she stressed that leadership requires continuous self-reflection and adaptation.
It’s part of her advice for aspiring leaders today: the importance of being oneself. “I know that sounds so cheesy, but it is actually quite difficult to know what being yourself is,” she said in the interview with Professor Verity Firth AM, Vice-President of Societal Impact, Equity and Engagement at UNSW, returning to a critical career insight. “It requires a journey of self-reflection, and that includes receiving feedback. There’s a whole host of tools you can use to understand and be curious about who you are.”
Opportunities and purpose
It’s a centring of professional purpose that was not always a given luxury, she said, recalling her youth in Sydney as a “pretty classical migrant story”, saying she was a “child of parents who, like all parents, wanted the best opportunities for their children”.
“This was in the mid-’70s, at the same time that Australia abolished the White Australia policy, which opened the doors to the rest of the world and, in particular, gave the opportunity for families like mine to really change the destiny and the course of their lives,” she said.
Her family moved to Sydney when she was 3 years old when her dad was sponsored to work as a chef – which she noted was not then as glamorous as a career as it might seem today. “I think people back then did jobs that really just paid the living, and it was just the way people made money,” she said. “I think the luxury of doing jobs for purpose and fulfilment, as we do now, really didn’t exist.”
Ms Lee began her career in a trainee role with PwC after graduating from high school. “That was really humbling and grounding, to know that you started your career very much from the bottom,” she said.
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After nearly seven years at PwC, during which time she simultaneously completed her accounting degree part-time at UNSW, Ms Lee continued her career beyond professional services. She branched out in finance roles “in some of the most disruptive and pioneering businesses”, she said, including out-of-home media operator Adshel (now known as oOh!media) and deals platform, Groupon.
‘Monumental’ move to The Iconic
However, the opportunity Ms Lee had in 2014 to join the online retailer The Iconic as Chief Financial Officer was when she “really started to think about what I wanted in my career”, she said. “I really joined with that vision of reimagining the way that Australians shop their fashion,” she said, noting that the company has since become a household name.
“Here we were a pure-play fashion retailer taking on some of these bigger organisations and department stores that have been around for 100 years, and not just reimagining the way people shopped, but also raising the bar on customer experience,” she said. “That was really monumental, from my own values perspective – the importance of the customer.”
Her time at The Iconic also involved what Ms Lee sees as her most difficult decision as a leader, when she had the opportunity to move into the Chief Operating Officer role. “I had spent 25 years in a career that was dominated by financial specialisation, so that was quite big – the moment you change, you really do have to make a decision and back yourself and decide that door is closed,” she said.
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“That moment was very tough for me because, on one hand, there’s the comfort zone that you have known for so long – you know you can really do that role well, and there was so much opportunity for me to continue doing some really great things in a CFO role – but to move into a new role, for which nothing you did for the past 25 years had any relevancy from a technical perspective, is pretty daunting.”
But the bold step paid off, and her stint as COO ultimately led to Ms Lee taking on the CEO role at The Iconic. That experience, in turn, led to her latest opportunity: leading Flybuys.
Leading Flybuys
When Ms Lee joined Flybuys as CEO in 2022, she encountered a retail landscape that was rapidly shifting in response to the post-COVID world. One of the first things she realised was that Flybuys was a “business full of people who were very passionate about the member,” an experience she called “absolutely amazing”.
“I think people want to work at Flybuys because they want a great member experience, and they want to do the right thing for the member,” she said.
However, what was also clear was that Flybuys could be arranged to continue to prioritise members even more. “So, we have restated what our mission is, and our mission is helping Australians get more of what they value beyond the checkout, and that’s helped unify us,” she said.
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“When you’re trying to find out what the purpose of a business is, you can go all different ways, but ultimately, we need to make sure we understand that when someone becomes a member of Flybuys, they want to get value, and we need to deliver that.”
Going digital-first
At The Iconic and now at Flybuys – both primarily digital businesses – Ms Lee has had a front-row seat for massive technological transformation and its impact on consumer behaviour and brand loyalty. She noted that Flybuys was formed in 1994 – “not really a digital age” – and that keeping the company member-focused has been intertwined with progressions in the use of data and insights over the past 30 years.
At The Iconic, she noted, data and insights were key to better understanding customers, with whom the online-based company couldn’t otherwise easily interact. It was vital to how The Iconic “changed the delivery proposition”, she said.
“We really were a pioneer on that – you can get your outfit in three hours in Sydney,” she said. “That was an absolute first for the digital world. And that came from understanding when the traffic was landing on our site, what members really wanted and how we inspired them.”
Ms Lee is often asked whether people “need something so fast”, she noted. “Yeah, well, people do, absolutely. “And I think understanding the customer – especially that younger customer who really values immediacy and also seamlessness – and being able to ensure that experience is phenomenal is so eye-opening,” she added. “It’s very much influenced the way I think about leadership at Flybuys, which is: let’s start with the member and understand what is important to them.”
A lifelong leadership journey
Ms Lee’s career path has led her to advocate for living “almost a no-regrets life,” in which “you have to back your decisions and be accountable for them”. It’s part of her message about the importance of being oneself and embracing feedback.
“I think about my upbringing in such a structured childhood, and how I then needed to grow up and navigate the world of corporate Australia and discover what my values were, who I wanted to be, and how I wanted to be a leader,” she said. “That is a lifelong journey. By the way, I’m still evolving what that looks like – you can’t be static, but you have to not be afraid of getting feedback and actually understanding who you want to be.”
To Ms Lee, a crucial part of leadership is being “so intentional about how you turn up to anything”, something she has brought to all her roles. “Your leadership shadow is so huge, and people will remember and value the interactions they have with you,” she said. “People deserve to see you at your best, and I think you have to take a huge amount of responsibility for your own self-discipline and how you turn up.
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“To some extent, I had to learn the hard way – there have certainly been times in my career when I’ve done excessive hours, and that hasn’t served me well – so I’m quite obsessed with telling people to learn those habits early,” she added.
Ms Lee also highlighted the importance of personal purpose in helping to define one’s values and principles. “Defining a personal purpose – and my purpose is to have a positive impact on the people around me in the world so that they can have fulfilling lives – has allowed me to feel centred around how I want to turn up,” she said. “If I know that I’m not going to have a positive impact on someone, then I’d best take some time to think through how I can.”
This advice tied in with another of Ms Lee’s key learnings from her career, about the importance of knowing how to ask questions and of not being shy. “Being brave enough to say, at such a senior role, ‘I don’t have all the answers’ is pretty daunting,” she said. “You don’t have to have all the answers. For me, the lesson was to give it a go and back yourself; it comes back to confidence in your abilities. And, of course, that also meant that the next time I had an opportunity, I felt that I could do it.”