Alternative investment technology company Artivest has appointed a general counsel, the first legal leader hired since its merger with competitor Altegris earlier this year.

Artivest, which has headquarters in both New York and La Jolla, California, announced Kamal Jafarnia as its general counsel and chief compliance officer in a press release Thursday. Jafarnia will split his time between headquarters, reporting to founder and CEO James Waldinger.

“My role specifically is both general counsel and chief compliance officer across the company, and as a result, it means I am in charge of [handling] all of the legal issues for the company from a day-to-day perspective, as any GC would be,” Jafarnia told Corporate Counsel.

“But in addition to that, and just as important, is that I'm also the chief compliance officer for our asset management business, our investment adviser, our broker-dealer, and our fund business, and as a result, I oversee the regulatory compliance obligations for our, what I call our registrants, our financial business,” he continued.

In his new role, Jafarnia will also build up Artivest's post-merger legal department.

Jafarnia has spent more than two decades working with both private and public companies, including those in the alternative investment space, on legal and compliance matters around  securities offerings, M&A and corporate governance.

He comes to Artivest after six months as a regulatory compliance consultant, according to his LinkedIn page, preceded by a deputy GC and managing director, legal and business development role at Provasi Capital Partners.

Before that, Jafarnia spent more than three years at W.P. Carey, a diversified real estate asset manager and investment trust, as senior vice president. He simultaneously held a number of other roles at the REIT, including CCO and GC of Carey Financial.

“Essentially, I have the same job here that I had there. The difference is there, [Carey] was owned by a public company, an NYSE-listed public company, here, this company is owned by very sophisticated private equity investors,” he said.

He also said his interactions with regulators and experience with corporate governance at Carey will help him in his new role.

Jafarnia served as counsel in Greenberg Traurig's REIT and securities practice and as counsel for Alston & Bird's financial services and products practice group in the years before joining W.P. Carey.

He's also held a number of business and legal roles, including SVP of American Realty Capital, CCO and EVP of Realty Capital Securities, EVP of legal and corporate development at Franklin Square Capital Partners and VP and assistant general counsel at Behringer Harvard. Jafarnia earned his law degree at Temple University and his LLM in securities and financial regulation at Georgetown.

“As regulations governing wealth and investment management continue to evolve, Kamal's expertise will be invaluable for helping us to ensure that the asset managers, financial advisors, and investor clients on our alternative investment platform remain in full compliance through the capital raising and investor communications process,” Waldinger said in a statement.