Trugreen names new CEO

Trugreen, No. 3 on the 2023 LM150 list, appointed Kurt Kane as its president and chief executive officer. Kane succeeds John Cowles, who leaves TruGreen after having successfully led the company through its most recent period of growth.

Kurt Kane

Kane most recently served as president and chief commercial officer at The Wendy’s Company. In this role, he led all aspects of Wendy’s U.S. business, which during his tenure grew to include nearly 5,900 restaurants and increased sales from $9 to $11 billion.

Among his key accomplishments in this position were the development and implementation of strategic plans that drove the highest sales growth achieved by Wendy’s brand in more than 15 years, reinventing the culture, structure and mindset of the U.S. operations team, and successfully launching breakfast, which delivered approximately $750 million in incremental sales during its first year.

As Wendy’s executive vice president, chief concept and marketing officer from 2015 until 2019, Kane led the development of a new brand positioning and advertising that reversed declines in 21 key brand equity metrics and drove digital and social engagement efforts to deliver communications that resulted in Wendy’s being named digital marketer of the year by adage.

Before joining Wendy’s in 2015, Mr. Kane held senior management roles at Yum! Brands, where he led and motivated frontline, service-oriented colleagues in the execution of innovative strategies to achieve significant growth at Yum!’s licensed brand Pizza Hut both in the U.S. and globally across 95 countries worldwide. Kane also held senior executive positions at Frito-Lay, Molson Coors Brewing Company and Procter & Gamble.

He served as a platoon leader of air defense artillery, in the United States Army and earned a bachelor’s of science from the United States Military Academy and a master’s degree in business administration from The University of Texas at Austin.