Leadership
Walker Lewis, Chairman of the Board and Founder
John Reece, Managing Director, Atlanta Office
Jayson Traxler, Director, New York Office
WALKER LEWIS
Chairman of the Board and Founder
Walker Lewis is the Chairman of Devon Value Advisers. Over the past two years, Mr. Lewis has advised clients through more than ten closed transactions, including the LBO of Jostens, Inc., the recapitalization of Codere, S.A., and several acquisitions completed by The Standard Register Co. and Roper Industries.
For 20 years, Mr. Lewis was Chairman of Strategic Planning Associates, which grew to a firm of 300 professionals specializing in shareholder value strategies. In the late 1980s, Strategic Planning Associates merged into Marsh & McLennan and Mr. Lewis served as Chairman and Chief Executive of the firm’s business consulting subsidiary Mercer Management Consulting, a firm of over 1,000 professionals.
In the early 1990s, Mr. Lewis served as President of Avon, North America, and a member of the Corporate Office of the Chairman. He has also served as a Managing Director of Kidder, Peabody and as a Senior Advisor to SBC Warburg Dillon Read. In addition to his role at Devon, Mr. Lewis also serves as Chairman of London Fog Industries, and Chairman of Applied Predictive Technologies. Mr. Lewis has also served on more than twenty Boards of Directors of public and private companies.
Mr. Lewis is an honors graduate of Harvard College where he was awarded a Harvard Traveling Fellowship. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City, the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs in Washington, D.C., and the Harvard Committee on University Resources.
JOHN REECE
Managing Director, Atlanta Office
John Reece II is a Managing Director at Devon Value Advisers and the leader of Devon’s Financial Advantage and Valuation practices. He is currently actively working with several publicly held companies on issues of valuation and the pursuit of Financial Advantage.
Prior to Devon, Mr. Reece was a Manager at The Boston Consulting Group, where he was a member of the Financial Institutions and Consumer Goods practice areas and received awards for innovation and project management. Mr. Reece has also worked at A. T. Kearney, Mercer Management Consulting, and served as the Strategic Planner for Avon Products USA. In those roles, Mr. Reece has advised clients in a variety of industries on strategies to capture maximum shareholder value.
Mr. Reece is an honors graduate of Harvard College.
JAYSON TRAXLER
Director, New York Office
Jayson Traxler has over ten years of investment banking, private equity and principal investing experience across a wide variety of industries including building products, consumer products, defense and aerospace, industrials, life sciences, power, industrials, packaging, and business services. Mr. Traxler has significant experience in mergers and acquisition transaction diligence and execution, leveraged buyouts and growth equity investments, valuation, and strategic advisory.
Most recently, Mr. Traxler was in Corporate Principal Investments and Trading at Merrill Lynch, a principal investment group focused on special situation and distressed capital structures with $4 billion of assets invested in loans, bonds, credit derivatives, mezzanine and public and private equity. Prior to Merrill Lynch, Mr. Traxler was with Blue Point Capital Partners, a private equity firm with over $1 billion in capital under management, where he sourced, executed and monitored control equity investments in middle market companies
Earlier in his career, Mr. Traxler was an investment banker with Edgeview Partners and First Union Securities/Bowles Hollowell Conner & Co, providing merger and acquisition advisory services to corporations, private business owners, and private equity clients.
During his tenure at Devon, his assignments have included working with clients to develop value-maximizing business plans, including growth-focused plans, turnarounds, restructurings, and acquisition and divestiture strategies.
In recent months at Devon, Mr. Traxler has advised both public companies and private equity firms on pending acquisitions.
Mr. Traxler attended the College of William and Mary, where he earned bachelors degrees magna cum laude in accounting and mathematics and was a James Monroe Scholar. Mr. Traxler holds a master's degree in business administration from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, with a concentration in analytical finance.