About Us
Carol R. Kaufman is the founder and CEO of Alternatives TLC, LLC, an Operational and HR compliance consulting firm based in Hawthorne, New Jersey.
Most recently, Carol has focused her efforts on operational excellence. She consults to small businesses and entrepreneurs of all kinds, including emerging managers, hedge funds, and family-owned businesses across a wide range of industries and is a recognized resource for employers navigating the current Form I-9 enforcement environment, specializing in Form I-9 compliance training and educating business owners and their staff, conducting internal audits, and building the systems and processes companies need to stay compliant before an ICE auditor arrives.
Using her proprietary "Roadmap", Carol also performs high level operational due diligence, identifying the gaps a firm has and then strategically advises and orchestrates ways to mitigate the risks – educating firms on “best practices”. When warranted, she introduces firms to the right technology solutions/service firms. In the right circumstances, she will also take on the role of part time Chief Operating Officer and Chief Human Resource Officer.
Carol's background is both undergrad and graduate degrees from the University of Michigan and worked with emotionally impaired, learning disabled, and culturally deprived adolescents for 7 years. She then switched industries, to the alternatives industry, and became a CTA/CPO (commodity trading advisor/commodity pool operator) in 1979. (All her soft skills transferred beautifully!) In 1982, Carol built a back office accounting system that ultimately became InvesTier® – the preeminent international hedge fund and fund-of-funds multi-currency investor accounting software that was ultimately acquired by SunGard in 2002.
Carol's former alternatives industry clients included firms like Bridgewater, Moore Capital, Dubin & Swieca (now Highbridge), Richard Dennis, Mesirow, Cargill, Bank of Montreal, DLJ, Ivy Asset Management, HedgeServ, SEI, PFPC, Viteos, Advent, Gottex and dozens of other high profile companies, representing many types of industry participants. This afforded her the opportunity to both understand the complexities of various types of entities as well as the ability to draw upon her high level contacts to make meaningful introductions between firms, when warranted.
In parallel, from 1998-1999 she was a Y2K consultant to Chase, doing diligence on over 125 third party firms with whom the alternatives group did business. Because of her vast array of skill sets, her expertise spans from front office to back office, from investor relations to operational risk management and everything in between, short of creating the actual trading systems themselves.
If you or someone you know wants (and/or needs) to raise their firm’s level of professionalism, scale their business with the right operational infrastructure to be properly poised for growth and be prepared for both regulatory (ICE) and investor scrutiny, perhaps a brief, no-cost consultation with Carol would be in order.
She can be reached at ckaufman@alternativestlc.com or +1.201.562.3500
