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 a BA from Yale University as well as an MBA from Harvard Business School and a JD from Harvard Law School (Cum Laude).

Other Team Members

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

Vice President

Ty Umoh is a seasoned finance and investment professional with 15+ years of experience across private equity, investment banking, turnaround restructuring, and strategic advisory. His expertise spans M&A, special situations, operational turnarounds, and value creation initiatives across technology, healthcare, financial services, energy and industrial sectors. He is recognized for combining deep analytical rigor with a hands-on, operator-oriented approach to driving enterprise value.

Mr. Umoh currently serves as a Vice President at Azurest Partners, where he advises lower middle market companies on M&A, carve-outs, structured financings, and complex special situations transactions. He partners with founders, management teams, and investors to execute transactions and drive value creation through strategic repositioning, operational improvement, and disciplined financial execution.

Previously, he was an investor at St. Cloud Capital, a lower middle market private equity firm with approximately $1.6 billion in assets under management. At St. Cloud, he led deal sourcing, execution, diligence, and portfolio value creation, working closely with management teams to accelerate growth, optimize pricing, enhance operations, and improve financial performance. He also served as Interim CFO for a venture-backed digital health platform (SmartCare360), overseeing FP&A, commercial strategy, and growth initiatives across remote patient monitoring, chronic care management, and wearable technologies.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Umoh worked at FTI Consulting and BNY Mellon Capital Markets, LLC, where he advised clients on restructuring, M&A, leveraged finance, carve-outs, liquidity forecasting, and performance improvement across industries including energy, telecom, infrastructure, and financial services.

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