North Star Wealth Management

North Star Wealth Management

Eric Heitman founded North Star Wealth Management in 2004 in the western suburbs of Chicago. The firm operates from Naperville, Illinois, serving a base of high-net-worth households across DuPage County and the broader Midwest. Heitman, a veteran of the wirehouse advisory channel, structured the firm to give clients access to institutional asset management, tax planning, and estate coordination without the product-push incentives he had observed at larger broker-dealers. North Star builds multi-asset portfolios spanning equities, fixed income, and alternative investments, with allocations often executed through LPL Financial as the custodian and platform provider. The firm's investment committee selects from a menu of institutional mutual funds, ETFs, separately managed accounts, and structured products, tailoring each allocation to a client's liquidity needs and tax profile. Its geographic footprint concentrates on Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana, though it serves clients who have relocated to retirement states such as Florida and Arizona. The firm does not publicize wholesale turnover or performance composites, but its ADV filings reflect a buy-and-downside-risk-management philosophy consistent with advisory practices serving entrepreneurs, corporate executives, and retirees. As an LPL-affiliated hybrid RIA, North Star functions with roughly a half-dozen professionals handling advisor-client relationships and operations. Heitman maintains a general securities principal license and acts as the firm's chief compliance officer, a dual-hat structure that keeps regulatory oversight in-house. The firm has not launched parallel vehicles, philanthropic entities, or formal co-investment clubs, though its relationship with LPL grants it access to alternative-investment platforms that source private equity and hedge fund products scaled for accredited investors. The year 2024 brought elevated portfolio inquiries around fixed-income repositioning as rates shifted, a trend North Star addressed through callable-agency-bond and CD laddering frameworks. North Star's structural distinction lies in its use of a large corporate RIA infrastructure — LPL — to deliver boutique-advisor intimacy at scale. That arrangement means the firm's investment policy statements, model portfolios, and compliance protocols are powered by LPL's research department, yet every client relationship stays with the local team. Succession is not publicly laid out; Heitman remains the central figure, and the firm's continuity risk runs through the standard LPL-affiliation succession templates that allow purchasing advisors to assume client obligations.