Ray Balestri

RAY A. BALESTRI
Ray Balestri specializes in private securities offerings, mergers and acquisitions, venture capital investments, complex software development and enterprise license agreements, and general corporate counseling. As an adjunct professor at SMU Cox’s Caruth Institute for Entrepreneurship, he brings a wide range of business and legal skills and experience.
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 he was instrumental in raising $6.5 million from venture capital firms in 2001 during one of the most difficult private equity environments on record. Prior to that, he was a partner in Block & Balestri, P.C., which Ray co-founded with Steve Block in 1992 after they left Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, where Ray began his legal career in the Taxation and Corporate and Securities sections from 1985 to 1992.

In 1982, Ray received his BA in mathematics, summa cum laude, with highest distinction from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1985. Since 2000, he has served as an adjunct professor teaching the Law of Financial Transactions for Entrepreneurs coursein the MBA program at SMU’s Cox School of Business.

Ray is involved in numerous charitable organizations, and with his wife Heather, he is the co-chair of the Childcare Group. 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, he co-chaired the Dallas Mardi Gras Charity Gala for the Dallas Chapter of the American Red Cross.