John Lester: bear markets no match for UBS chief, who has found courage battling kidney disease.

• Author: Bronikowski, Lynn
• Position: EXECUTIVE EDGE - Boettcher and Co.

John Lester's career and life started on the same day - July 10, 1986.

That was the day he landed his first job - at the prestigious Boettcher & Co. - freshly armed with an MBA from the Daniels School of Business at the University of Denver.

It also was the day the Greeley native who had been plagued with kidney disease since his undergraduate days at DU got a phone call from University Hospital. They had found a kidney match, bringing to a close exhaustive dialysis treatments.

"That kidney lasted 17 years, and I've been through several bear markets and a couple more kidney transplants since," said Lester, who would go on to head UBS Wealth Management for Colorado - today overseeing management of a $7 billion portfolio and 200 financial advisers working in seven offices statewide.

In 2001, his kidney began to fail, and despite undergoing dialysis treatments three days a week for five hours each day, he was driven to continue working.

"In an environment of disappointment and despair, you struggle with a lot of things when you're ill like that, and you need to have successes," said Lester, 47. "To me a lot of my successes came from my work. In fact, some of my best successes were during that time."

From 2003 to 2004, while awaiting a kidney transplant, Lester managed to maintain his top-rated performance within the Western region for UBS.

"And I became a better manager," he said. "When you go through something like that, you become a lot more grounded from a perspective of importance. You have greater ability to empathize with others and recognize that everyone carries a burden of some sort or another. And it's OK that sometimes those things get in the way of our business.

"I felt like I was coming to work and adding value when it would have been very easy to sit at home thinking about myself," he said.

Lester acknowledges that he's well paid and enjoys golf and country club memberships. But he says his...