CEO of the Week: Enterprise Holdings’ Chrissy Taylor

Enterprise Holdings has a new CEO this year — Chrissy Taylor, the granddaughter of the rental car company’s founder, Jack Taylor.

She was promoted Jan. 1, replacing retiring Pamela Nicholson, after serving as the St. Louis-based company’s president and chief operating officer. Taylor becomes only the fourth CEO in the company’s more than 60-year history and the third generation of Taylor family CEO leadership. Her father, Andy Taylor, is currently executive chairman.

“It is an incredible honor to be named CEO and lead our talented team of employees,” Chrissy Taylor said. “I’m grateful for the outstanding leaders who have entrusted me to build on their accomplishments and fully committed to ensuring the business is successful for another 62 years and beyond.”

As CEO, Taylor oversees global strategy and operations for Enterprise Holdings, which along with its affiliate Enterprise Fleet Management, offers car rental, carsharing, truck rental, fleet management, retail car sales and other transportation services. The company owns and operates the Enterprise Rent-A-Car, National Car Rental and Alamo Rent A Car brands through its integrated global network of independent regional subsidiaries.

In May, Taylor predicted how the rental car business will ramp back up, telling Scott Solombrino of the Global Business Travel Association that while airport rental services will take longer, rentals for car repairs and other needs around hometowns will increase – and so will rentals for road trips.

“We do not think that by the end of the year we will be at pre-Covid-19 levels, however, our home city business, we think that’s going to pop,” she said. “We think that will gain momentum faster, because as the lockdowns are released or lightened or loosened, people are going to want to get out…. And so, they’re going to take their car, they’re going to rent a car, and they’re going to go places and maybe that road trip really becomes popular with that leisure traveler.”

To best protect customers and employees from Covid-19, Enterprise instituted the Complete Clean Pledge, a relaunch of the company’s cleaning protocols. Employees have been trained to implement the new and more comprehensive cleaning mandates for their protection, and for the safety and service of customers. These mandates include enhanced cleaning guidance for vehicles, shuttles and branch locations, as well as social distancing practices.

Enterprise also modified its services to include curbside rental transactions, as well as delivery at some locations, to help best serve customers while minimizing foot traffic in locations.

“We know everyone has been impacted by Covid-19, and we want to assure our customers that they can have confidence in knowing we are doing everything we can to support their transportation needs with clean vehicles and a safe rental process as they begin to move forward,” Taylor said.

Taylor began her career by joining the Enterprise Rent-A-Car Management Training Program, working in the field at several different rental locations. Transitioning in 2003 to Enterprise’s corporate headquarters, she oversaw regional operations throughout the United States.

In 2006, Taylor relocated to London to further develop Enterprise’s market in the U.K., Germany and Ireland. Upon receiving her executive MBA from Washington University in St. Louis in 2010, Taylor joined Enterprise Holdings’ treasury group, where she assisted in the financial restructuring of the company’s fleet management business. She was named executive vice president and chief operating officer in 2016 and president in 2019.

Headquarters: St. Louis

Age: 43

Education: Bachelor’s degree, Miami University in Oxford, Ohio; MBA, Washington University in St. Louis

Named CEO: 2020

She’s No. 128 on Chief Executive and RHR International’s CEO1000 Tracker, a ranking of the top 1,000 public/private companies