Paul Voorheis

Paul M. Voorheis is a Dallas-based investment banker and financial executive with more than two decades of experience in mergers and acquisitions, high-yield finance, private equity, and corporate development. He began his career at Salomon Brothers Inc. in 1992, concentrating on mergers, acquisitions, and high-yield financings. During his time at Salomon Brothers, his transaction experience spanned telecommunications, broadcast/media, technology, waste management, manufacturing, plastics, and energy — sectors that continue to define much of the deal flow at his current firm.

After Salomon Brothers, Voorheis spent several years in management consulting and operational roles for both domestic and international companies, focused on corporate development, strategic alliances, accessing the U.S. capital markets, and implementing emerging technologies. This operating experience — as opposed to a purely advisory background — informs his hands-on approach to the companies he backs. He earned his degree in Finance, with a minor in Economics, from Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas.

Voorheis serves as a Managing Director at Aspen Advisors, LP, a Dallas-based independent merchant bank founded in 2000 (offices at 2651 N. Harwood St., Ste. 525, Dallas, TX). Aspen Advisors serves small-to-middle-market companies with investment-banking services — raising private equity and debt capital, buy-side and sell-side M&A, and recapitalizations — and provides capital both through relationships with private equity funds and through direct investments from its merchant banking division. Key principals at the firm include Marc R. Still.

In parallel, Voorheis has been closely involved with an insurtech venture in the Dallas area: he is associated with Wave Financial Partners, which evolved into Wave Insurance Technologies, Inc. (founded 2015, now doing business as AVYST), where he is listed as Chief Financial Officer. AVYST builds workflow software for insurance agents and carriers, its flagship product being the "eForms Wizard." His earlier roles also include Bristol Partners and Clean Energy Technologies.

• Invests and advises through Aspen Advisors' merchant-banking model, which combines investment-banking advisory with direct investments alongside a network of private equity fund relationships.
• Targets small-to-middle-market private and public companies, providing "capital from our relationships with private equity funds as well as direct investments from our merchant banking division" (Aspen Advisors' stated positioning).
• Sector orientation is broad but rooted in his deal history: telecom, media/broadcasting, technology (including insurtech), energy, manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, consumer/food & beverage, and waste management.
• Comfortable with operational and corporate-development complexity — his background in consulting and operating roles suggests he values companies where capital plus strategic/operational help (strategic alliances, capital-markets access, technology adoption) can move the needle.
• Early-stage/seed exposure is evidenced by his direct, founding-team involvement in an insurtech startup (Wave/AVYST) rather than a large published angel portfolio.