The Team
Rich Lester, Founder and CEO
Rich has spent his career working in human and veterinary healthcare services. His primary focus has been creating joint ventures with doctors at each of the organizations’ various locations. VPP is bringing together his years of experience and expertise to build a unique veterinary business.
Rich most recently spent almost three years as the President of BrightHeart Veterinary Centers. He built and centralized the administrative functions, including accounting, vendor contracting, and employee benefits. Additionally, Rich was responsible for identifying, negotiating and closing multiple acquisitions, supervising the integration of the newly acquired hospitals into the BrightHeart family of practices and overseeing their operations.
Before joining BrightHeart, Rich was Co-CEO & CFO of Pentec Health, a specialty pharmacy business in suburban Philadelphia focused on nutritional therapies for the dialysis industry. Prior to Pentec, he was CFO and Senior Vice President of operations at IntelliCare, Inc, a disease management and medical call center business based in Portland, Maine.
Earlier in his career, Rich spent over 7 years with DaVita, Inc., a leading dialysis provider. During this time he was directly responsible for establishing and managing many joint venture relationships with nephrologists that worked in DaVita’s dialysis centers. He held a variety of senior management positions including Vice President of Development and Operations for the New York region, VP of Investor Relations and a member of the Company’s Executive Committee.
Rich started his career at Bear Stearns & Co, Inc. in the corporate finance group. He earned an MBA at UCLA and Bachelor’s degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in both Finance and American History.
Phone: 866-VET-PART (838-7278)
Contact: info@vetpartners.com