In 2011, Lesley Hiew joined Amazing Borneo as an executive: the bottom of the operations ladder, the person who does whatever needs doing. Fifteen years later he is the company's Operations Director. 

He became an operations supervisor, then a manager, then a director, and took no shortcuts to get there. He volunteered into departments that were not his. He went out on expeditions to see the work himself. While many other people may change companies every few years in pursuit of a better title, he stayed and earned his. 

Then he did something less predictable with the years that followed. He enrolled in a Master in Management, and afterwards a PhD at Universiti Malaysia Sabah, studying part-time while running the ground operations of a growing company. The obvious subject for someone in his position would have been management, or logistics, or anything with his own advancement in it. He chose the mountain guides.

Not the company. Not the industry. The guides: the people who take climbers up Mount Kinabalu in the dark and bring them down again, and who deliver exceptional experiences to visitors from all over the world despite language barriers. [Read about the role of mountain guides in Sabah's tourism →] 

He spent years documenting the realities of their work: what they earn, what equipment they carry, what training is available to them. Five peer-reviewed papers have come out of it since 2025, and his recommendations centre on professional development: structured training, recognised skills, and better pay. [Read about his PhD →] 

He mentions none of it on his LinkedIn profile.

There is a straight line between the young executive who kept picking up the work nobody had claimed and the director who spent years researching the guides his operations rely on. Four promotions have not shifted where his attention sits. 

It is also why the operation works. Amazing Borneo's sales team brings people to Sabah; whether they enjoy their experience rests almost entirely on the guides, drivers, boatmen and crew who are with them throughout their trip. Lesley has run that side of the company for most of its life on a principle he has never needed to say out loud: look after the people doing the work, and the work looks after the guest.