Years in the industry: 25 years
Job responsibilities: As President and CEO of Pritchard Industries, I am responsible for the overall direction and performance of the company, including full profit and loss ownership, operations, and business growth across all regions. I set the company’s strategy and operating model. That includes leading our move from a branch-based structure to a regional one, and building PLAN (Performance Leadership and Non-Negotiables), the single language we use to run the business, review performance, and hold ourselves accountable.
I also own our growth agenda. I built and led our first national sales organization, continue to oversee client relationships and retention across hundreds of sites, and set our acquisition strategy from target selection through integration, guided by the playbook we rewrote after reviewing past deals. I am responsible for our people. That means the engagement, training, safety, and retention of thousands of frontline employees, and the development of the leadership team above them. I spend as much time in the field with our teams and clients as I can.
Finally, I manage the financial health of the company: budgets, overhead, margins, and capital decisions, working closely with our board and investors.
Career path: My career began at age 14 as a hostess at Acadiana’s Catfish Shak in Louisiana. Over eight
years, I worked my way up to waitress, bartender, and front-of-house manager at that location. That job paid for an
accounting degree at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, and set the pattern for everything that
followed: learn the work from the ground up, then earn the next job.
I began my professional career with taxes, earning my CPA and a Master of Taxation from the University
of Denver, and consulting on state and local tax at Arthur Andersen. In 1998, I joined Compass Group,
the world’s largest food and support services company, in a financial and purchasing role at SHRM
Catering Services in Lafayette.
My operational talent showed quickly. In 2002, I was fast-tracked to President and CEO of ESS Gulf of
Mexico—an underperforming, $80 million business with 1,200 employees. In four years, I grew sales
more than 500 percent and profits more than 1,000 percent, earning recognition as a Chase Bank Top 20 Under 40
honoree in 2005. In 2008, I took over ESS North America in Calgary and grew it from $225 million to
$1 billion in six years with 100 percent client retention, all while earning a Master of Science in Business
Administration from Revans University.
Compass named me Executive Vice President of Compass Group USA in 2015, then President of
Morrison Healthcare in 2016, where I improved profitability every year and held client retention at 96
to 98 percent for seven straight years. In 2023, Pritchard Industries recruited me as President and CEO. In my
first full year, I delivered 14 percent organic growth—double the company’s previous record.
From a catfish restaurant to the corner office, my path has never skipped a step. I got to where I am by
doing every job well, taking on businesses others considered broken, and proving, over and over, that
taking care of people and clients is what makes the numbers work.
Best advice received: Take the jobs nobody wants. That is the best advice I've ever received, and it was blunt for a
reason. The line for comfortable assignments is long, and they teach you little. A broken business has no
line at all, and it will teach you more in one year than a healthy one will in 10.
I built an entire career on it. I walked away from a safe tax career at Arthur Andersen for a
catering company serving oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. When Compass needed someone to take over an
$80 million business that was underperforming, I said yes, then grew sales more than 500 percent and
profits more than 1,000 percent in four years. When the toughest assignment in foodservice came open,
remote camps across northern Canada, I moved to Fort McMurray, Alberta, in the heart of the oil
sands, and later to Calgary, and turned a $225 million business into $1 billion. Morrison Healthcare and
Pritchard Industries followed the same pattern. Every business she has ever been handed was somebody
else's problem. Every single one became a record.
It is now the first thing I tell everyone I mentor. The easy jobs make you comfortable. The hard
jobs show you, and everyone watching, exactly what you are capable of.
Fun fact: People who meet me expect what the resume promises: the numbers, the discipline, the
operating reviews. What they do not expect is the rap music. I am a genuine fan, and as an executive, when I
walk into the boardroom to talk performance non-negotiables, I was, more than likely, listening to rap
on the drive in.
The other surprise is a ritual. Once a decade, on each milestone birthday, at 40, at 50, I smoke
exactly one cigarette, just to say I did. One per decade, no exceptions. It may be the only thing I
ration more tightly than overhead.
Both point to the same truth my teams already know. I work as hard as anyone in the industry, and
I refuse to take myself too seriously while doing it.