TruGreen has a new president

MEMPHIS, Tenn. – The ServiceMaster Co., announced that David Alexander has joined the company as president of its TruGreen subsidiary. He will report to ServiceMaster CEO Hank Mullany. Alexander replaces Gary Brackett, who resigned on Oct. 9, less than a year after taking the job.

“We’re excited to welcome Dave to the ServiceMaster family of brands,” said Mullany, who had been serving as interim TruGreen president since October. “He has an outstanding track record of executive leadership in customer service, operations, supply chain and driving revenue growth. He’s a high-energy leader, a strong communicator and passionate about developing high-performing, diverse teams.”

Alexander joins TruGreen from Citi Trends, a publicly-traded urban retailer based in Savannah, Ga., with more than 5,000 employees, 500 stores and three distribution centers operating in 29 states, where he most recently served as CEO, according to a statement from TruGreen.

Previously, he was a retail consultant for London-based Apax Partners after serving two years as chairman, president and CEO of privately-held Portrait Corporation of America. Prior to that, he served in a variety of executive roles, including president and chief operating officer, over a 10-year career, at Family Dollar Stores, now a $9 billion Fortune 500 company with 55,000 employees working in 7,500 stores across the country.

While at Family Dollar, Alexander helped the company achieve consistent earnings growth and nearly doubled sales, while significantly boosting productivity in both its retail operations and warehouses.

“Getting TruGreen on track and restoring consistent growth and profitability to the business is one of our top priorities in 2013,” Mullany said. “We’ve made good progress in the past two months as we’ve reviewed and made significant improvements to our sales, marketing, staffing and operations strategies. We’re thrilled to bring Dave on board to help us transform TruGreen into a rapidly growing, best-in-class lawn care service provider.”