Naomi Garlick

Naomi Garlick is an Associate on the investment team at Brightstar Capital Partners, a New York–based middle-market private equity firm. She joined the firm's deal team after completing her MBA, working on sourcing, diligence, and execution of control-oriented buyout and growth investments in closely held, family- and founder-led businesses.

Before Brightstar, Garlick worked at Moelis & Company as an Investment Banking Analyst, where she advised on mergers and acquisitions, restructuring, and capital markets transactions across a range of industries. Earlier in her career she was a Financial Analyst at Goldman Sachs in High Yield Credit Product Control. This progression — leveraged-finance/credit accounting at Goldman, then M&A and restructuring advisory at Moelis — is a common path into middle-market private equity.

On the education side, Garlick earned her undergraduate degree from Lafayette College (2015) and an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (2023). The post-MBA timing is consistent with an associate-level investment role at the firm.

As an Associate, Garlick is a member of the deal/execution team rather than a check-writing principal or partner. Investment decisions at Brightstar are made by the firm's senior partners and investment committee, with the firm led by founder, Managing Partner and CEO Andrew Weinberg.

• Invests through Brightstar Capital Partners, which targets control equity positions in middle-market companies rather than minority, seed, or angel-stage deals.
• Firm's stated model is an operationally intensive "Us & Us" partnership approach — partnering with founders, families, and entrepreneurs to help closely held businesses "reach their full potential" rather than imposing a top-down "us vs. them" relationship.
• Core sectors: business services, industrial/industrial services, consumer/consumer services, technology/TMT, and government services & technology.
• Typical equity checks of ~$50–$250 million, in companies with revenues of ~$50 million to $1 billion; the firm has also launched a dedicated lower-middle-market strategy for smaller founder-, family-, and entrepreneur-led businesses.
• Emphasizes hands-on operational value creation, and has publicly highlighted the disciplined use of AI to improve execution, productivity, and decision-making across portfolio companies.