When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, Tricia Kinney was the vice president and deputy general counsel for Kimberly-Clark Corporation, where she served as worldwide general counsel for its global and B2B business and enterprise-wide global supply chain. Navigating the complexity and chaos of the pandemic required Kinney to flex her entrepreneurial thinking to map solutions for unique problems. Successfully doing so gave Kinney the clarity to realize that she wanted to do that kind of work on a larger scale by helping to build a company.
At almost the same time, Roark Capital was in the midst of purchasing ServiceMaster Brands. Joining ServiceMaster presented Kinney with the opportunity to use her entrepreneurial thinking in a company in startup mode.
“With its brands, ServiceMaster has the great luxury most startups do not have — ServiceMaster does not have to introduce itself or its brands to the world,” the company said. “Instead, ServiceMaster can focus purely on maximizing the growth of its brands, which is often found only in an established company. ServiceMaster’s melding of startup growth potential with iconic brands was essentially a once-in-a-career type opportunity for Tricia, which she jumped to pursue.”
ServiceMaster Brands provides disaster restoration, specialized and in-home cleaning, janitorial, moving and junk removal services and biohazard remediation, serving more than one million homes and businesses each year. Originally founded in 1929, ServiceMaster Brands became a stand-alone company in October 2020, when Roark Capital purchased ServiceMaster Brands and carved it out from Terminix Corporation. “Our nine brands include, among others, ServiceMaster Restore, Two Men and a Truck, Merry Maids and ServiceMaster Clean,” the company said. “ServiceMaster is now home to over 2,500+ franchisees across 4,900+ locations in 50 states and nine countries.”
Kinney is an alumna of Leadership Atlanta and has recently been a guest speaker for Atlanta Trend magazine and the Georgia Asia Pacific American Bar Association. She serves on the boards of directors of the Atlanta Community Food Bank, Pro Bono Partnership of Atlanta, Murphy-Harpst Children’s Centers and Project Light, which she also helped to found.
“I base decisions heavily upon data and the collaborative input of the team, with a keen focus on driving business results while identifying and resolving the risks that are not just involved in any given decision, but those that we believe will actually materialize,” Kinney said.
