Regent Andrew W. (andy) Lester
Andrew W. “Andy” Lester, from Edmond, Oklahoma, was appointed as an Oklahoma State Regent by Governor Mary Fallin in 2016, serving a nine- year term ending in May 2025. The Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education is the constitutional coordinating board for the Oklahoma colleges and universities responsible for allocating state funds and setting admission standards and academic policies.
Regent Lester is a partner in the Oklahoma City office of the law firm Spencer Fane LLP. His areas of emphasis include business, civil rights, constitutional, and state and local government litigation. He has served as Acting General Counsel for the Oklahoma House of Representatives, and has twice served as Chief Counsel to Special House Committees investigating public corruption.
He has been an Adjunct Professor at the Oklahoma City University School of Law, having taught State & Local Government, Employment Law, Criminal Law, and International Law. He was appointed in 2007 and reappointed in 2010 by Governor Brad Henry as a member of the Board of Regents for the Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical Colleges, and served as Board Chair in 2012-2013. He also served as a Trustee of Eureka College in Central Illinois.
Regent Lester earned his law degree and a master’s degree in foreign service from Georgetown University in 1981. He graduated from Duke University in 1977 with a bachelor’s degree in history. While an undergraduate, he spent a year studying at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Germany.
In 1980, he was a member of President Ronald Reagan’s Transition Team for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. From 1988-1996, Regent Lester served as a United States Magistrate Judge for the Western District of Oklahoma. He is also a member and former chairman of the Oklahoma Advisory Committee for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. In 2016-2017, he co-chaired the bipartisan Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission, which conducted the first-ever independent, objective and thorough review of the state’s entire capital punishment system.
He is a past president of the Rotary Club of Edmond, and in 2011 was named Rotarian of the Year. In 2012, he was named Edmond’s Citizen of the Year. Regent Lester and his wife, Barbara, live in Edmond, and have a daughter, Susan.
Phone: 405.225.9371
E-mail: alester@osrhe.edu
