Shelly Sun Berkowitz is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of BrightStar Group Holdings, Inc., the parent company of BrightStar Care®, BrightStar® Senior Living, andBrightStar® Care Homes. BrightStar Care provides medical and non-medical home health care and medical staffing services through a national network. BrightStar Senior Living and BrightStar Care Homes provide assisted living and memory care in a senior living community setting. Shelly founded BrightStar Care in 2002 in the Chicagoland area after facing a challenging personal experience seeking home care services for her grandmother and not finding the breadth of services—both medical and non-medical—that her grandmother so desperately needed. Shelly realized there was not a high-quality, dependable care provider in her area that she felt would care for her family better than she could. From there, she launched BrightStar Care, a home care and medical staffing agency. In 2005 to diversify and localize BrightStar Care’s operations, Shelly opened her business to franchising. Over the last 20 years, BrightStar Care has grown to more than 380 franchised and company-owned locations nationwide, employing 15,000 caregivers and 5,700 registered nurses who oversee the care and safety of each individual client.
From day one, Shelly’s mission for BrightStar Care has been to provide seniors, families, and those needing home care services with the full continuum of care. Shelly has positioned BrightStar Care as the premium home care provider, committed to delivering a higher standard of care, evidenced by network-wide nurse-led care and Joint Commission accreditation—the gold standard within the health care industry.
Shelly is passionate about empowering the next generation of entrepreneurs and established a Franchise Certification Program at her alma mater, UT. Driven by an entrepreneurial spirit, Shelly was named one of the top 25 highest-rated CEOs during the COVID-19 crisis by Glassdoor and is an Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2023 Midwest Award winner.
Under Shelly’s Leadership, BrightStar Care has consistently ranked among the Fastest Growing Private Companies in America by Inc. magazine and has made Entrepreneur magazine’s Franchise 500 list for the last 13 years. BrightStar Care has also continuously ranked on the Franchise Times Top 400 list and was named a top women-centric business by Global Franchise magazine. On the clinical side, BrightStar Care is the only national home care franchise to receive The Joint Commission’s Enterprise Champion for Quality award every year since the award’s inception.
