Tawnya M. Bell

Tawnya M. Bell gives family offices, private fund managers, and middle-market business owners the rigor usually reserved for public company boardrooms, applied to businesses where every decision lands on the owner’s own balance sheet. She’s a former corporate finance banker with two decades of public company transactions behind her. She builds entities, capital raises, and deals that hold up under pressure, and she’s the one clients call at 7 a.m. when something breaks. Clients describe her as attentive, protective, and accessible, with a habit of working through every possible scenario before it turns into risk.

Rapid response when the unexpected threatens the business

Plenty of Tawnya’s work runs straight down the fairway: holding companies, subsidiaries, and special purpose entities for assets being acquired or divested. Where clients rely on her most is the outlier, the issue nobody else around the client knows how to handle. That could be original corporate and regulatory records lost in a natural disaster, a key employee walking out without notice, partner embezzlement headed toward a business divorce, or an owner’s death under operating agreements that never planned for it. She moves fast to protect the company’s credibility, reputation, and balance sheet, then drafts the buy-sell and succession provisions that keep it from happening twice.

Public company discipline applied to privately held businesses

Tawnya spent most of her career with publicly traded companies and global institutions, including Wells Fargo, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and PricewaterhouseCoopers, working across capital markets, banking and finance, financial regulation, and corporate governance. She has sat across the table from AmLaw 100 firms on restructurings, reorganizations, and M&A. At those firms, most of the work typically lands with associates who have never worked inside a public company. Her middle and lower-middle-market clients get that same depth from the partner actually running their deal. As borrower’s counsel, she restructures debt and negotiates credit facilities with lenders who appreciate dealing with someone fluent in their language.

Securities compliance that protects capital raises and investor trust

Securities law leaves little margin: a missed SEC filing or FINRA misstep can open the door to multiple causes of action. Tawnya structures true private placements for fund managers raising capital outside institutional channels. She drafts the private placement memorandums and builds the compliance record that keeps them out of that territory. A raise can be 100% compliant and still produce a disgruntled investor, so when that call comes she walks the client through how the law applies to their business model, what’s already been done, and every what-if. Most investor concerns trace back to transparency on asset performance, and closing that gap is usually what keeps a complaint from becoming a claim.

Entity structures built for growth, governance, and cross-border investment

Forming an entity is a commodity; forming the right one isn’t. Tawnya advises on jurisdiction, cap table design, distribution waterfalls, and compensation, knowing that structure dictates the tax outcome for every interest owner. She works alongside clients’ tax advisors rather than in place of them. For foreign investors acquiring U.S. assets, she sets up the domestic entities and acquisition SPEs, plus the employment, consulting, and governance documents to run them, informed by 14 years living and working in Latin America. Business owners who trust her with the company tend to keep their estate plans with her too, so everything lives in one place.

A lifelong commitment to community leadership and service

A Texas native and the daughter of cattle ranchers in Washington County, Tawnya has always felt a pull toward advocating for the most vulnerable parts of society. She serves on the board of the University of Texas Alumni Association and chaired the 2024 and 2025 Longhorn Legacy Scholarship Gala, raising critical scholarship funds for local students. She’s a former board member of the Ronald McDonald House and the American Heart Association, volunteers regularly through the Texas Bar’s pro bono clinic, and is a member of St. John the Divine Episcopal Church in Houston. She believes giving time, resources, and knowledge without expecting anything in return comes back in ways that are hard to quantify, and it makes her a more open-minded, creative, and strategic attorney for her clients.