Mr. Lester has held the positions of President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board. He has served as Chairman of the Board since 1986, and previously served as Chief Executive Officer from 1979 to 2001. He was reappointed as Chief Executive Officer in July 2006. Mr. Lester presently serves on the Executive Council of UCSF, and the Advisory Boards of the Retail Management Institute of Santa Clara University and the Walter A. Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a national trustee of The First Tee. In 1991, Mr. Lester endowed The Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation within the Haas School. In 2005, the Lesters endowed a new addition to the University of Oklahoma's Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, designed by acclaimed architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen. Mr. Lester was born and raised in Oklahoma and attended the University of Oklahoma. Among his many honors, he was elected to the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 2001, named Haas School's Business Leader of the Year in 2003, and awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the University of Oklahoma in 2004. In 2007, he was recognized as Lifetime Humanitarian by the Housewares Charity Foundation. In 2007, Mr. Williams and Howard Lester, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Williams-Sonoma, Inc., received the Inc Magazine Bernard A. Goldhirsh Lifetime Achievement Award, an acknowledgement to those who honor the values and virtues of American entrepreneurship.
