Jeff has been a municipal securities credit analyst and market strategist for over 25 years, with expertise extending to all sectors of the public finance ecosystem. During this time, Jeff has held leadership positions across sell-side and buy-side organizations. In his current role at The Bond Buyer, Jeff developed and launched the firm’s municipal market intelligence platform. 
 
Jeff provides thought leadership and subject matter expertise, offering actionable guidance to The Bond Buyer’s stakeholder communities, including legal counsel, municipal advisors, issuers, underwriters and institutional investors. In this position, Jeff often moderates topical panels and presents to various industry organizations.
 
Prior to joining The Bond Buyer, Jeff was a Managing Director and head of Oppenheimer & Co.’s municipal research and strategy effort. Before Oppenheimer, Jeff worked as a Senior Municipal Analyst in a major insurance company’s investment division and served as the Director of Municipal Research at two buy-side investment management firms. At these firms, Jeff provided in-depth municipal credit analysis and strategic guidance for managing capital and risk exposure. 
 
Jeff holds a B.S. in Business Administration with a concentration in Finance from the University of Delaware. He is a member of the Municipal Analysts Group of New York and the National Federation of Municipal Analysts. Jeff maintains FINRA Series 7, 63, 50, 52, and 53 licenses and has received industry awards.

Institutional Banking

Steadfast partner. Sophisticated solutions.

Beyond traditional banking, UMB offers deep expertise and consultative partnership across the institutional marketplace, from community banks and municipalities, to some of the largest corporations, broker-dealers and fund companies in the U.S. and abroad.

Alex Zaman is an Executive Director at Morgan Stanley and serves as Head of Surface Transportation Banking and Urban Development at the firm. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, Alex spent nearly 13 years at Citigroup in both Los Angeles and San Francisco, serving as Co-Head of Transportation and helping lead various real estate-related initiatives at the firm. Alex has 15 years of experience in infrastructure finance working on projects that cover a broad range of asset classes, including highways, toll roads, managed lanes, mass transit, transit-oriented development, airports, middle income/workforce housing, affordable housing, permanent supportive housing, commercial real estate, tax increment financing, higher education and general government operations. Alex has worked on over $40 billion of financings as book-running or co-senior manager to execute a variety of financing structures and credit types, including tax-exempt and taxable bonds, fixed and variable rate bonds, private placements, limited offerings, general obligation bonds, revenue bonds, lease obligations, tax allocation bonds, essential housing bonds, pension obligation bonds, public-private partnerships, project financings, and various federal transportation loan programs including TIFIA and RRIF.

Taylor Klavan focuses her practice on tax issues relating to public finance. She provides guidance as tax counsel on virtually all types of tax-advantaged state and local debt, including governmental financings, financings for 501(c)(3) organizations, financings in the airport and transportation sector, affordable housing facilities financings, and financings for solid waste disposal facilities and sewage facilities for large utilities and industrial operations. She collaborates with investment banker clients to develop innovative, tax-compliant strategies for structuring and marketing tax-exempt transactions, seeking to ensure that deals comply with the federal tax requirements while also helping stakeholders pursue their end-goals. 

Taylor also has considerable experience with post-issuance compliance for tax-advantaged bonds, including private business use and private payment analyses, arbitrage issues in new money issuances, refunding and multipurpose bond issues, multipurpose issue allocations, and compliance with remedial action regulations. She frequently interacts with the Internal Revenue Service on behalf of clients in voluntary closing agreement program requests, audits of tax-exempt finance transactions, and private letter ruling requests.

Alex Wallace is a 33-year veteran of the Municipal Securities industry with broad experience across many aspects of municipal finance. Alex is currently the Head of the Municipal Products Group at Flagstar Bank, where he serves as Managing Director and President of Flagstar Public Funding Corp.

Prior to coming to Flagstar Bank, Alex was Head of Higher Education and Strategic Bank Relationships at Loop Capital Markets, a prominent minority-owned Municipal Broker-Dealer from 2020-25. From August 2009-2020, Alex helped start the U.S. Bancorp Municipal Products Group and served as Head of Public Finance. At Wachovia Securities (1996 – 2008), Alex was Co-Head of the Municipal Securities Group and was responsible for the Public Finance Group. Alex also led several other businesses including Municipal Credit Origination, Syndications, and Municipal Leasing. Prior to joining Wachovia Securities, Alex worked for the State Treasurer’s Office of the State of North Carolina (Local Government Commission).

Alex currently serves as Chairman of the Investment Committee at North Carolina State University. He is also on the Board of Advisors for the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy Center for Municipal Finance and the Board of Advisors for the University of Texas LBJ School of Public Affairs’ Center of Municipal Capital Markets. He is also a Board Member the Bond Market Association (BMA). He is also a member of the National Federation of Municipal Analysts and a current Board Member of the Southern Municipal Finance Society. Alex also serves as Chairman of the Board for Path to Permanency.

Alex has BA degrees in Economics and Business Management from North Carolina State University and a Master of Public Administration (MPA) with a concentration in Public Finance from North Carolina State University.

Jessica Eckerle Lynch is a director with Baker Tilly’s public sector practice. Jessica has been involved with numerous professional engagements including financial studies for municipally owned utilities, not-for-profit corporations, regional water and sewer districts and conservancy districts. These studies quite often have involved the determination of utility revenue requirements, cost-of-service studies and the financial planning associated with the issuance of tax-exempt bonds. She also assists clients with budget preparation and capital planning. Jessica is also MSRB Municipal Advisor Series 50 and Series 54 Qualified.

Lorry Palacios is a Senior Managing Director at Ramirez & Co., Inc. and is the Co- Head of the Public Finance department at the Firm. She provides investment banking coverage to state and local issuers across Texas as a senior banker and in the Midwest as Head of the Midwest Region for the Firm. She joined Ramirez in January 2011 and has 25 years of public finance experience. In 2001, she began her career in structured finance with a focus on single family and multifamily housing issuers while at her prior firms of UBS and RBC. Ms. Palacios is an Independent Director of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas and was elected by the Bank’s members at-large to serve a four-year term that commenced on January 1, 2023. Lorry is an active member of the Women in Public Finance (National, Texas and Chicago chapter) and has participated in the mentoring and scholarship committees. She is a past board member of the Municipal Advisory Council of Texas and is a member of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund’s Austin Advisory Council. She received a BA in Public Policy from Stanford University and holds Series 7, 52, 53, 63 and SIE licenses.

Kevin Bueso serves as Chief Financial Officer for the Village of Oak Park, Illinois, where he leads the Village’s financial strategy, long-range planning, capital financing, and fiscal stewardship. With nearly two decades of public-sector finance experience, his work focuses on balancing infrastructure investment and service delivery with affordability, debt capacity, and long-term financial sustainability.
 
In Oak Park, Kevin helps guide multi-year capital planning and financing decisions across a complex municipal environment, including transportation, streetscape, utility, public facility, and other infrastructure needs. His perspective is grounded in the practical challenges local governments face in funding major capital priorities amid rising costs, evolving federal and state funding conditions, competing service demands, and pressure on local revenue sources.
 
Kevin is committed to transparent, data-informed financial management and to connecting fiscal policy with tangible community outcomes. Born and raised in Honduras, he is bilingual in Spanish and English and brings a broad perspective to public service, with a particular interest in equitable infrastructure investment and sustainable local government finance.

Founded in 1885 with a 140-year legacy rooted in the historic Taft family, today Taft is one of the nation’s fastest-growing law firms. As a modern law firm with a non-headquarter operating model and more than 1,250 attorneys, Taft is fully committed to delivering the highest level of service to today’s organizations and individuals. Taft’s public finance attorneys have a long history of delivering innovative financing solutions and aiding clients with complex, legally novel issues in the major areas of tax-exempt and taxable financing. Our professionals are regularly sought after and retained as bond, issuer’s, tax, borrower’s, disclosure, and underwriter’s counsel on a wide variety of public and nonprofit sector financings. We regularly assist in development and infrastructure financings to fund the improvement and expansion of existing municipalities, as well as engage in financings for large-scale projects. We have been pivotal in the growth of numerous cities and towns throughout the Midwest, Mountain West, and Southwest.