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Leo V. Valdez  |  Lauro Garcia III  |  Brian J. O'Connor  |  Michael Vaughn  |  Bruce D. Kelley

Leo V. Valdez
Leo Valdez is a Senior Vice President and the manager for the Phoenix office. He has over 20 years experience in municipal finance in Arizona and the southwest, including extensive experience in industrial development authority bonds, sales tax (excise tax) revenue bonds, infrastructure finance, school districts, multi-family housing, single-family housing, hospitals, and special needs revenue bonds. Leo also has experience with rating agency and insurance company presentations. Prior to working in the investment banking industry, Leo worked for the United States Department of Agriculture. He was a specialist loan officer under the Business & Industry Loan Note Guarantee Program in Washington D.C. and later became the Chief for the program in the State of Arizona. He still implements government programs to assist issuers and companies obtain financing in the form of government loan guarantees and grants. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture Business from New Mexico State University and a Master of Science degree in Finance from American University, Washington, D.C. He is a board member of the Arizona Lottery Commission and sits on several charitable board organizations.

Lauro Garcia III
Lauro Garcia is highly experienced in multi-family housing and development financing. He has worked with major issuers in Arizona, California and Colorado including the Arizona Department of Transportation, the City of San Jose, Los Angeles County, and the State of Arizona. He was responsible for developing the initial private credit enhancement programs for multi-family new construction projects. Prior to joining Hutchinson, Shockey, Erley & Co. in 1996, Lauro was a principal in his own firm, Bancroft, Garcia & Lavell, and a director in public finance for Merrill Lynch. He holds both undergraduate and law degrees from Arizona State University.

Brian J. O'Connor
Brian O'Connor has over 20 years experience as a financial advisor and investment banker. During his career he has served as financial advisor to more than 200 issuers in Arizona, New Mexico, and California and other western states. Brian has acted as investment banker to various Arizona issuers since 1984. In this capacity, he has worked with various issuers to design and implement capital improvement and bond programs, enabling his clients to address the needs created by exponential growth in a prudent and timely manner. He is a highly experienced financial analyst and has worked with numerous school districts throughout Arizona. In addition to school districts, Brian's experience includes: cities, towns, counties, corporations, municipal property corporations, water and sewer districts and community facilities districts. Brian received a Bachelor of Science in Finance from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa and a Masters of International Management from The American Graduate School of International Management (also known as "Thunderbird") in Glendale, Arizona. He has also completed doctoral level courses at Arizona State University.

Michael Vaughn
Michael Vaughn joined HSE in 2006 after 15 years in the public sector. He currently assists school districts, fire districts, cities, towns and tribes with project financing to meet their capital improvement project needs. Michael works closely with school district clients and their political action committees (PAC's) in assisting with the passage of their bond elections. Prior to joining HSE, he primarily worked in the housing industry, focusing especially on environmental issues.

Michael has 10 years of tribal governmental experience. In 2003 Michael was appointed Arizona's first tribal representative for the Arizona Department of Housing (ADOH) in which he lead a state-wide initiative working to improve mortgages on tribal land, assisting with infrastructure financing and increasing tribal access to State funding for housing on tribal land. Arizona was the first state that implemented a tribal set a side of $2.5 million exclusively for tribal housing.

Mr. Vaughn holds Series 63 and Series 7 licenses.

Bruce D. Kelley
Mr. Kelley is a Senior Vice President in the Phoenix office.

Mr. Kelley began his career in municipal finance as a corporate and bond attorney, first with Mudge Rose Guthrie and Alexandar in New York and subsequently as a partner in the public finance department of Squire Sanders and Dempsey. Mr. Kelley has in excess of twenty five years' experience as a health care investment banker. He has worked as underwriter, financial advisor or counsel to numerous health care entities, both nonprofit and for profit, including major hospital systems and stand alone facilities, in transactions that include tax exempt and taxable financings, in a variety of direct and credit enhanced structures. He has advised on a wide variety of healthcare merger and acquisition transactions involving the purchase or sale of hospitals and of hospice, home health and personal care businesses, as well as senior living and skilled nursing facilities.

Mr. Kelley is a registered securities representative, currently holding Series 7, Series 24, Series 53, Series 63 and Series 79 licenses. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Boston College and a Juris Doctor from the University of Notre Dame.