RAY A. BALESTRI

Ray specializes in private securities offerings, mergers and acquisitions, venture capital investments, complex software development and enterprise license agreements, and general corporate counseling. Ray brings a wide range of business and legal skills and experience to Balestri & Associates. Ray founded Balestri & Associates in 2002 after a two-year tenure as the CFO and General Counsel of Attenza, Inc., an enterprise software company, where Ray was instrumental in raising $6.5 million from venture capital firms in one of the most difficult private equity environments on record. Prior to that, Ray was a partner in Block & Balestri, P.C., which Ray co-founded with Steve Block in 1992. Both Ray and Steve Block came out of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, where Ray began his legal career in the Taxation and Corporate and Securities sections from 1985 to 1992.

Ray received his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1985. In 1982, he received his Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics, summa cum laude, with highest distinction from the Department of Mathematics, from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Since 2000, he has served as an Adjunct Professor, teaching Law of Financial Transactions for Entrepreneurs in the M.B.A. program at the Edwin L. Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University.

Ray is involved in numerous charitable organizations, and with his wife Heather, is the co-chair of the Childcare Group.  Ray is a charter member of the Board of Directors of National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship.  He was formerly a member of the Board of Trustees of the Dallas Museum of Art and a co-chair of the Junior Associates of the Dallas Museum of Art. In 2000, Ray co-chaired the Dallas Mardi Gras Charity Gala for the Dallas Chapter of the American Red Cross.