Brian Roberts is a Partner at HighCamp. Based in California, he joined the firm in May 2022.
Tell us about your career and how you made it to HighCamp.
I have always wanted to work in a career that served the public good. With that goal in mind, I went to law school to study international law and become a human rights attorney. However, coming out of law school in 2009 at the height of the great recession, I wound up in a big law firm working with private equity managers on diligencing and closing middle-market transactions. Meanwhile, I had become deeply interested in learning what had caused the recession and what we could do to prevent another one.
In 2012, after the passage of Dodd-Frank, most of the private equity firms I worked with were required to register with the SEC, so I was staffed more on regulatory matters and SEC investigations. I found this work interesting and rewarding, as it gave me an opportunity, in some small way, to help promote the integrity of our capital markets. It meshed with my desire to do good in the world, and I was hooked.
Two years later, in 2014, my wife was pregnant with our first child, and I foresaw that being a father would require a better work-life balance. I made the jump to consulting at ACA Group, where I worked alongside former SEC examiners on regulatory matters. I also met all four of the other HighCamp partners there! My position at ACA required me to travel, however, which was tough on my young family. When my second child was born in 2019, I decided to move in-house to Marlin Equity Partners, a ~$9 billion private equity manager located right in my back yard (Hermosa Beach).
There’s nothing that really replaces in-house experience in terms of understanding the perspective of a Chief Compliance Officer. I’m truly grateful for my time at Marlin because it helped me see how all of the competing interests within a firm, across all of the different business groups, fit together and are important in their own rights. The compliance officer doesn’t exist within a bubble.
As any compliance officer knows, there’s a lot of routine, administrative work involved with running a compliance program, though. When my partner, Ashley Drake, called me one day in 2022 to ask whether I would be interested in joining the HighCamp team, she explained that I could once again focus on fascinating consulting questions with minimal travel. I was excited. And, when I realized I would get to work with my old friends again, I was sold.
Was it tough to get back into consulting after being in house?
No! I always loved consulting because clients generally come to you with the difficult, interesting questions. The opportunity to focus on those things again was pretty compelling and I found myself diving right into the work.
How does your background as a lawyer shape your approach to compliance consulting?
Compliance consulting and serving as legal counsel to investment advisers share an obvious nexus – they both revolve around the successful navigation of important federal laws and regulations. Attending law school helps provide me with a helpful perspective on the structure of those federal laws, how the regulations thereunder are promulgated, and how they are enforced. Representing private fund managers provides direct exposure to their investment processes, including how they pursue opportunities, identify and mitigate risks, negotiate with counterparties, and deal with regulators in enforcement situations.
This exposure not only helps attorneys quickly grasp the structure of the laws, rules, and expectations applicable to private fund managers, but provides insight into the kinds of factors that are relevant to decisionmakers and how to provide tailored compliance advice.
What projects are you particularly proud of from your time at HighCamp?
A lot of what we do is essentially preparing our clients for interactions with regulators, and in particular, SEC examinations. When a client gets notified of an exam, it’s game time. Exams often require a lot of work, both on our side and on the client’s side. However, being present to provide reasoned advice during a period of high stress, and then seeing the positive results of that advice and assistance when the examination has a successful resolution, is the most rewarding part of my job.
What’s next for you at HighCamp?
HighCamp is doing awesome. We’re continuing to grow our consultant base and opening new offices, and we now have people all across the country, plus a partnership with a firm of former colleagues in the UK. I’m also helping to spearhead a number of technological products that should help streamline a lot of the work our team does, so I look forward to seeing how AI and other software can contribute. And of course, I plan on continuing to provide high-touch consulting services to my long-term clients.
