Our Team

Senior Team

Kenneth Allen

Founder & Managing Director

Kenneth is the founder of Azurest Partners. He has over 29 years of experience in investment banking, strategy and project management.  His prior experience includes senior roles at Lehman Brothers and JP Morgan Chase’s Investment Bank.

Kenneth has business development experience and transactional expertise in West Africa, the United States and the Caribbean.

At Lehman Brothers, Kenneth was a Senior Vice President. He covered clients in the business services, telecommunications / information  services, financial technology and the Internet/technology sectors. His clients included Accenture, Affiliated Computer Services (now Xerox),  Checkfree (now Fiserv), Electronic Data Systems (now Hewlett Packard), IBM, Insurance Services Office (now Verisk) and Perot Systems.  Kenneth has been involved in equity and debt capital raising transactions as well as M&A assignment on behalf of his clients.

He also served as a Chief Administrative Officer in Lehman Brothers’ Mortgage Capital division. He supported technology planning and  management across the five mortgage origination subsidiaries which comprised the division. Kenneth was one of the leaders in the  development of Lehman’s offshoring strategy for its mortgage origination capability, ultimately leading to the creation of and successful  operating model for the largest component of Lehman Brothers’ Mumbai facility (over 800 employees involved in mortgage processing,  mortgage applicant data verification and research).

At JP Morgan Chase, he was a Global Business Manager, overseeing planning and administration, compliance, management reporting and  oversaw special projects for those various groups in the Investment Bank. He co-led initiatives including a Peoplesoft-based project for  headcount tracking and forecasting across the institutional businesses at JP Morgan Chase (representing over 120,000 employees) as well as  efforts to implement technology-based operating models across the Investment Bank’s human resources division.

He earned a BS in Systems Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and has an MBA and MA in Education from Stanford University.

Jon C. Walls

Managing Director

Jon C. Walls is a senior finance executive possessing over 25 years of experience with Fortune 500 companies and small to mid-sized businesses. Jon began his career at Lehman Brothers where he served as a Senior Vice President of Investment Banking until 2000 with an industry specialization in Financial Institutions. While at Lehman, he developed his deep expertise in delivering complex M&A, equity and fixed income solutions to sophisticated clients. Over a span of eight years he successfully executed more than 30 transactions totaling over $16 billion in mergers and acquisitions and over $5 billion in debt and equity financings.

Jon’s most recent experience includes over 8 years leading a professional staff as President of an insurance brokerage he acquired with private equity and property management partners. During that time he turned around the sales and overall financial performance of the company while overhauling the company’s technology infrastructure and its financial strategy. In addition, for more than ten years, Jon has been and remains the instructor of S&P Global Market Intelligence’s Fundamentals of Bank Valuation, a seminar he designed which is offered throughout the country. Jon has also held senior leadership roles at a mortgage bank and a technology
start-up.

Jon holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, a JD from Harvard Law School (Cum Laude) and a BA from Yale University.

Other Team Members

Flavian Marwa

Senior Vice President, Public Sector & Entrepreneurial Finance

Flavian has over two decades of experience in the private and public sectors. He has industry experience in economic development, new  initiatives & business ventures. His functional leadership includes early-stage business & entrepreneurial finance, strategy, policy analysis,  international trade, community development finance, business environment for competitiveness, public private partnerships, and  investments.

Most recently, he was a Deputy Commissioner for Market Operations with the Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking, a financial  services regulator, in Washington D.C. Early he was Finance & Private Sector Development specialist for the International Finance  Corporation / The World Bank during which he analyzed sector specific impediments to private enterprises participation in value chain of  economic activities for select sectors. During which he designed policy interventions to promote the private sector and broadly to improve  investment climate and international trade.

During Flavian’s Public Service Sabbatical as a FUSE Executive Fellow, he structured the U.S. Treasury Department $15 million, State  Small Business Credit Initiative’s Business Capital Program supporting small business in Washington, D.C. He also co-designed the  Inclusive Innovation Fund for the Government of District of Columbia.

As Lead Analyst, for market modeling and business case design, Flavian helped the African Development Bank; and its partners to create  and launch a $300M Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility (ADFI) for catalyzing digital financial services in Africa. Flavian co-  founded a FinTech company in Kigali, Rwanda as well as Broadband Services Company that served the sub-Saharan Africa. Flavian earned  a MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management, a Master of Public Administration (MPA) from Harvard University’s Kennedy’s School  of Government , a Master of Science in Systems Engineering from the University of Maryland at College Park and a BS in Engineering from University of Dar es Salaam.

Kent Lucas

Senior Consultant

Kent serves as a Senior Consultant to Azurest Partners, providing industry insight and business advisory services for clients in the automotive and mobility sectors. He is Managing Partner of 30X LLC, a global advisory firm focused on auto tech, mobility, smart cities and industrial tech. He is also an advisor to Next Gear Ventures, an Israeli based venture capital firm. Prior to forming 30X, Kent served as head of business development at VectoIQ LLC where he helped source, develop and manage the firm’s advisory relationships and investments in automotive tech and smart mobilitystartups. He also helped to develop the firm's relationships with large industry organizations and advance the firm’s presence in the U.S., Israel, Europe and Korea.  Kent holds a B.A. in Economics from Harvard University and an MBA from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business where he was a Corporate Executive Fellow.

Ernie Green

Senior Advisor

Ernie has a long career in finance, having served in senior roles in public finance on Wall Street as well as serving on a number of industry associations. His prior experience was as a Managing Director in Public Finance at Lehman Brothers, where Ernie served as the lead banker for a number of critical client relationships including covering states, major cities and other governmental agencies in the United States. He was responsible for the structuring and execution of transactions in the bond and real estate markets for both the federal and local governments in the United States. Prior to Wall Street, Ernie held a number of roles in the U.S. Federal Government, including serving as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment and Training, Chairman of the African Development Foundation and Chairman of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Capital Financing Advisory Board.  Ernie earned a BA and an MA from Michigan State University.

Ty Umoh

Associate

Ty is an experienced finance professional with over ten years of experience across a wide range of industries. He is currently a private  equity investor at St. Cloud Capital, a Los Angeles-based private investment firm founded in 2001 to provide growth capital to U.S. lower  middle market companies with annual revenues between $10 million and $150 million. At St. Cloud, Ty is responsible for sourcing,  execution, and portfolio monitoring functions.

Previously, he worked as a senior consultant at FTI Consulting, Inc., advising various stakeholders of troubled and distressed companies  across a wide range of industries, including financial services, hospitality, gaming, commercial real estate, energy & oil field services,  construction, infrastructure, and municipal-related assets.

Additionally, his most recent experience include roles at BNY Mellon and Ocean Park Advisors, LLC investment bank, where he focused on liquidity forecasting and assessments, business plan due diligence, development of waterfall and recovery analysis, stakeholder negotiations and seller due diligence support, board/shareholder representation, developing executive compensation/bonus plans, and ad-hoc strategic and operational assessments.

In conjunction with all engagements, his work also included detailed market and competitor research, robust due diligence and financial  statement analysis, extensive financial modeling, quality client facing deliverables, and daily executive management/client  communications.

Ty received his Bachelor’s in Business Administration from the University of Houston where he graduated magna cum laude. He also has  Master degree in Energy Economics with a focus in Corporate Finance from Rice University.