She lost her businesses, her husband, took aerospace to Bursa — now she's eyeing space

IT'S early afternoon when I walk into a bustling cafe in Bangsar and spot Datuk Nonee Ashirin Datuk Mohd Radzi already seated at a table, flanked by two stylish young assistants who look at home beside her.

It's quite a moment to be meeting her.

Just weeks earlier, the company she heads, GTA Holdings Bhd, made its debut on Bursa Malaysia's ACE Market, capping years of work in an industry that has long been associated with men, machinery and technical expertise. The aviation maintenance, repair and overhaul company raised RM71.75 million through its public issue, while its Malaysian public offering was oversubscribed more than 22 times.

But sitting across me in the cafe is not quite the corporate figure those headlines suggest. Nonee is dressed elegantly in a tudung, polished without looking overly formal, and greets me with an easy smile. It's only when I sit down that I notice the cast on one arm.

"What happened?" I blurt out.

"I fell off a horse," she replies so matter-of-factly that I almost laugh.

I later learn that horses have been part of Nonee's life since she was 12, when her father kept polo ponies and she spent time around the Ipoh Polo Club. Perhaps, then, a fractured arm is just another twist in a life that has rarely followed a straight line.

Once we begin talking, there's little sense that the injury has slowed her down.

NOTHING LESS THAN EXTRAORDINARY

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Nonee's stories move quickly, from her childhood in Ipoh to Britain, where she studied law and was called to the Bar; from the businesses she built and lost to the aerospace industry she eventually made her own; from the years she spent rebuilding her life to the husband she lost to Covid-19 and the three children who were still studying when he died.

Then she's laughing about salsa and hip-hop, telling me how her daughters now track her whereabouts on their phones and talking with complete conviction about one day putting a satellite into space.

"Why should my life be ordinary? It can be extraordinary," she declares, beaming impishly.

The line could almost be the unofficial motto of her life.

Born and bred in Ipoh as the second of four siblings, Nonee grew up with a teacher mother who expected straight As and a father who began as an administrative and diplomatic officer before moving into business and politics.

Her elder sister became a doctor, her younger sister a chartered accountant, while her brother, she jokes, seemed to get away with much more.

The family had a way of describing Nonee: "A boy trapped in a girl's body."

She was the adventurous one, the rebellious one, the child who could be stubborn enough to test her parents, but who also inherited her father's curiosity.

He loved geography and would quiz his children on capitals and flags, while horses offered another kind of education.

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Her father kept polo ponies and was involved with the Ipoh Polo Club, and by the age of 12, Nonee had become familiar with the world of horses.

She went to Britain to study law, returned to Malaysia, was called to the Bar and practised for a couple of years, fully expecting that the profession would be her life.

"It wasn't my calling," she muses.

LEARNING THE HARD WAY

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Leaving her law practice was one of the first times Nonee chose uncertainty over the security of a path already laid out for her.

Business followed, bringing with it successes, failures and lessons that couldn't have been learnt in a classroom.

Nonee speaks about failure without dressing it up, perhaps because she has lived through enough of it to know that there's little value in pretending otherwise.

There were businesses she lost, staff who left and periods when the money simply wasn't there; during the 2008 downturn, she found herself back in Ipoh with her children, trying to work out what came next.

"I had to start from zero," she recalls softly, before remembering the moment an opportunity finally came her way in Kuala Lumpur.

"I U-turned immediately! Salary lah!" she laughs.

She returned to Kuala Lumpur in 2010, eventually bringing the children back with her, and the years that followed became an exercise in careful arithmetic. There was one car, she took the LRT and every bill mattered.

"I couldn't hack it, so my late husband had to become the driver," she recalls, laughing at the memory now.

But she was determined that her children would understand what those difficult years meant, so she made them sit down and list every utility bill, grocery expense and household commitment, wanting them to see that money didn't simply appear because their mother was once able to provide it.

The lesson stayed with them. Today, her daughter Sarah, who's in London, is determined to find her own way, telling her mother, "Ma, I don't need your money."

Nonee's response is direct: "Stay in London, figure yourself out. It's your decision, your responsibility."

It's the same philosophy she has come to embrace through her own bruising education in business — life can change direction without warning and sometimes the only thing you can control is how you respond when it does.

"Life can bite you in the ass if you're not tough," declares Nonee.

MOVING ON

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Nonee knows, however, that toughness doesn't mean being untouched by what life throws at you.

When her husband died, their three children were still studying and the loss left a space that success, however hard-won, couldn't simply fill.

"I hated graduation. I dreaded weddings. My daughter got married. Those were difficult occasions for me," she recalls.

The milestones that should have been moments of shared joy instead became reminders of the person who was no longer there to witness them.

Even now, she finds herself talking to her late husband at his grave, half-scolding him for leaving her to carry on without him. "I selalu menyumpah dia kat kubur," says Nonee, laughing. "You left me alone!"

It's funny in the way only grief sometimes can be — laughter giving voice to a hurt that has never quite gone away.

And yet, as it has so many times in her life, the world kept moving, and Nonee moved with it.

Her journey into aerospace began when she was still young through her father's involvement with the Langkawi International Maritime and Aerospace Exhibition, and she soon found herself navigating an industry that was then dominated by men.

Being young, presentable and a woman could get her noticed, but it couldn't keep her in the room. For that, she knew she needed something more.

"I always say, you can look beautiful, look like AirAsia, but if you don't have this," she says, pointing to her head, "you won't get anywhere."

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There were times she was mistaken for someone from human resource or marketing, an assumption she'd quickly correct with a laugh: "No, I'm the owner, heck!"

Behind the humour, though, was the reality that she had to work hard to establish her credibility.

Nonee isn't an engineer, and she knew she had to understand enough of the technical world around her to hold her own in conversations with people who'd spent their careers in it.

What she brought to the table was business instinct, negotiation, an ability to read people and, over the years, an increasingly deep understanding of the aerospace ecosystem.

"You have to know how to articulate what you want."

That, she discovered, was as much about understanding people as it was about understanding business.

Sitting across from international partners, she learnt to listen for what mattered to the person on the other side of the table, whether the conversation took place over a meal, wandered through France, Paris and Bordeaux, or found its way through aircraft and aviation before circling back to the deal itself.

"It's not what you say, it's what the people want to hear," she advises.

Years later, some of those business relationships have become friendships, and people who were once strangers are now long-standing partners.

Nonee adds: "When you know your worth and you have that level of respect, over coffee, you can just have an agreement. That's trust."

MAKING OF A LEADER

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Her own experience has taught her that reputation travels further than any single deal. It's also why she's so particular about the people she works with.

"These are your people!" she says, gesturing towards her staff.

Nonee believes Malaysia has enormous talent, but talent alone isn't enough.

"If your attitude sucks, tak bolehlah."

Her leadership style, she shares, is deliberately non-hierarchical.

"I don't do glass ceiling. I'm not hierarchical. I hate that."

Her staff members, she continues, shouldn't feel like they need an appointment simply to knock on her door.

"My doors are open. You have any problem, talk to me."

The approach is important in aerospace, where there's little room for complacency.

"We put things in the air."

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There can be no "never mind" or "didn't check" when safety is involved, and she expects people to be sharp, accountable and honest.

But somewhere along the way, her understanding of what she does has grown beyond aircraft.

"I'm in the business of not fixing aircraft; I'm in the business of nation building… human capital building," she says, and suddenly the business feels bigger than aircraft and balance sheets.

Success, for Nonee, is no longer simply about how far she can go alone, but how many others she can bring with her.

"I can't do it alone. I can be that face, but it's the strength from these people over the years."

DARE TO DREAM

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Nonee admits she was once a control freak, but life has taught her to loosen her grip. Her father, 81, is facing heart surgery, her children are grown and the company she built has people she trusts enough to share the load.

Her own days remain disciplined. She wakes at 5am, sometimes earlier, and has been known to message staff members at 3am when she finds herself wide awake during what she calls the "witching hour".

She swims three times a week, makes time for whatever clears her head and turns to zikir to recalibrate. She loves the sea and sees holidays not as a luxury, but as part of staying well enough to keep going.

There's still plenty of the old Nonee in the woman sitting across from me.

She loves R&B, rap, hip-hop and salsa, and will happily sing and dance when the mood takes her.

At her daughter's wedding, she was warned not to embarrass her by getting up to perform. Naturally, she ignored the instruction. "I don't care, it's my joy, my small concert," she laughs.

These days, the roles have begun to reverse, with one of her daughters even putting a locator on her phone.

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"I need to know where you're at," she tells her, prompting Nonee to burst out laughing. "They mother me now!"

Perhaps that's another sign of how life has shifted. The woman who once lived by "live fast, die young" has since reconsidered the second half of that philosophy.

"I don't think I want to die young! I still have many things to do!" she declares, chuckling.

There certainly seems to be no shortage of them. Nonee has already begun thinking beyond aerospace, establishing the Nonee Ashirin Foundation as a vehicle for giving back, with ambitions spanning science education, healthcare and humanitarian causes.

More than anything, she wants whatever she builds to outlast her.

And then there's the satellite.

She admits people sometimes look at her as though she has gone slightly mad when she talks about putting one into space, but she remains unfazed. "Usually, if I say I want to do it, it will happen. Maybe not now, but inshaAllah, with a lot of doa and ikhtiar, it will happen."

SPACE FOR SELF

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As our conversation winds down, I ask her: "What's one question you wish people would ask you, but seldom do?"

She pauses momentarily before answering: "Are you okay? That question."

People assume she is, elaborates Nonee. She looks fine, she's working, travelling, making decisions…

Her children have their own lives and, sometimes, there's simply no one at home to talk to.

Perhaps that's why she finds being pampered after breaking her hand so amusing.

Jokes Nonee: "Bila I patah tangan, baru dimanjakan (only now that I've broken my hand am I being pampered). Macam tu kena jatuh selalu lah kot (Maybe I should fall more often then)!"

The joke is pure Nonee, but beneath it is something softer: after a lifetime of carrying businesses, expectations, family and grief, she's discovering what it feels like to let someone else carry a little for her.

She calls it "zeroing me" — moving away from the old "I, me, myself and I" and making space for something beyond herself.

The ambition is still there, as are the temper, the humour and that restless refusal to stand still. Nonee still wants to build, dream and chase the improbable.

But perhaps the younger woman who thought she had to carry it all alone would understand something different now: sometimes strength isn't in bearing the weight, but in knowing when to let it go.