Rollins Inc., a legacy Atlanta pest control company, captures a unique blend of Southern traditions and societal evolution.
As a close observer of Rollins for decades, change has been afoot as the company has transitioned from having only white males on its board (from 1964 to 2015) to one with three women and two Black people among its 12 directors. In the last decade, the average age of directors has also gotten much younger.
I remember attending the 2012 annual meeting of Rollins, when it added its youngest director, Emory’s Thomas Lawley, who was 65. Almost everyone else on the board was 10 to 20 years older, including the late Wilton Looney, the retired CEO of Genuine Parts, who was then 92.
Today, only one board member is in his 70s (Donald Carson), and everyone else is younger (in their 60s). The youngest director is Jerry Gahlhoff Jr., 53, who became CEO of Rollins in 2023.
The contrast between then and now is stark. It was so apparent when I attended the Rollins’ annual meeting on April 28 at the company’s understated corporate headquarters on Piedmont Road. Rollins is the parent company of Orkin Pest Control.
In a room once dominated by white men with grey or white hair (or no hair at all), the Rollins board was now much more representative of its diverse customer base.
While adapting its board, the company has also preserved its Southern flavor. Its annual meeting still feels like a family reunion with invited friends and colleagues.
Among Atlanta’s public companies, Rollins is one of the last few entities to still hold its annual meetings in person. The meetings are held in a relatively small conference room down a narrow hall in the company’s headquarters. Because the company is largely owned by members of the Rollins family, the annual meetings rarely have outside shareholders.
But the company has been changing with the times.
“We are proud of the diverse background, skills and experiences we have attracted to serve on our board over the decades of our history,” John Wilson, executive chairman of the Rollins board, said in a statement.
“Starting with O. Wayne Rollins, Randall Rollins and Gary Rollins as founding family members serving as directors, we now continue that family legacy with Pam Rollins and Tim Rollins as board members,” Wilson continued. “We’ve been fortunate to recently add many respected members of the Atlanta and broader business community as independent directors to create a top-notch board as we continue to grow.”
Pam Rollins, the daughter of the late Randall Rollins, was the first person who was not a white male to join the Rollins board in 2015. It took until 2021 before Rollins added more diversity when Susan Bell, a retired partner of Ernst & Young, joined the board. Gregory Morrison, a retired senior vice president with Cox Enterprises and an African American, also became a director that year.
Later they were joined by Louise Sams (2022), the retired general counsel of Turner Broadcasting System, and Dale Jones (2024), a longtime search consultant who is Black.
Even more extraordinary is the diversity of the board’s leadership and its three committees.
Sams is the board’s lead director and chair of its nominating and corporate governance committee; Bell chairs the board’s audit committee; and Morrison chairs the human capital management and compensation committee.
The top management of the company is no longer dominated by family members. The executive chairman is Wilson and the CEO is Gahlhoff.
On a personal note, Rollins has always welcomed me to attend its annual meetings even though I’m not a shareholder. Rollins is an understated Fortune 1000 company, owned by people who value their privacy, but they always let me, as a member of the press, enter the company’s inner sanctum.
I especially appreciate that Rollins still holds its annual meetings in person. The company even held an in-person annual meeting in 2020 during the height of the COVID pandemic with attendees being spaced six feet apart, even though some board members tuned in virtually that year.
In 2020, most of Atlanta’s public companies pivoted to virtual annual meetings. After COVID, virtually none of them returned to holding annual meetings in-person.
“We may be the last one,” said Russ Hardin, referring to local companies holding in-person annual meetings. Hardin, retired president of the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation, joined the Rollins board in 2023. He also serves on the board of Genuine Parts Co.
From my perspective, by not holding in-person annual meetings, we’ve lost an important opportunity for shareholders to connect with company executives and corporate directors.
I fondly remember the annual meeting season when Genuine Parts would hold its board meeting on the last Monday of April, SunTrust, Rollins, RPC and Marine Products would hold their annual meetings on the following Tuesday back-to-back, and Coca-Cola would have its annual meeting on Wednesday morning.
During those days, there was significant overlap among directors on the boards of Genuine Parts, Rollins, SunTrust (Trust Company Bank), RPC, Marine Products, the Woodruff Foundation and even the Coca-Cola Co.
A common denominator was the late Jimmy Williams, CEO of SunTrust, who served on almost all those boards, almost always sitting next to his dear friend Wilton Looney. As much as I can get nostalgic for “the good old days,” it is heartwarming to see Rollins embracing diversity. It shows how much the South has changed. It added diversity by adding directors it knew and trusted in the community. It always has been about relationships.
The Rollins family acquired Orkin for $62 million in 1964. At the end of 2025, the company had revenues of nearly $3.8 billion with a market cap of more than $26 billion. Members of the Rollins family have been generous philanthropists for decades.
The journey has not all been rosy. In August 2010, the Rollins family experienced a painful split. The four children of Gary Rollins, Glen Rollins, Ellen Rollins, Nancy Rollins and O. Wayne Rollins II, filed a lawsuit against their father and their uncle, Randall Rollins, who was then CEO.
Up until that moment, Glen Rollins was in line to become CEO of Rollins. But the lawsuit changed all that, causing a major disruption in the family and at the company.
For the record, the five children of Randall Rollins stayed out of the legal fray and never split from the family or the company. Pam Rollins became a director in 2015, and her younger brother, Timothy Rollins, became a director at the 2026 annual meeting.
One of the poignant moments I had covering an annual meeting was the 2011 Rollins annual meeting. That’s when Gary Rollins told me he had thought his life had been all set, and then everything fell apart. Gary Rollins served as CEO of Rollins from 2001 to 2022, and he holds the title of executive chairman emeritus.
After nine years of litigation, the family finally reached a confidential settlement in November 2019, when Fulton Superior Court Judge Kelly Lee Ellerbe approved the agreement. At the time, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported the four siblings walked across the courtroom to hug their father and uncle.
Another change also is underway. Marine Products, largely owned by members of the Rollins family, announced its plans to merge with Tennessee-based MasterCraft Boat Holdings. So instead of having three annual meetings back-to-back, there were only two this year – Rollins and RPC, an oil and gas services company. Both annual meetings lasted less than 15 minutes each.
Another change within the Rollins organization: today there is much less overlap among board members and executives of Rollins and RPC.
In the decades I’ve been following Rollins, I’ve seen the company navigate the ups and downs of business, family, and the deaths of executives and directors.
Throughout it all, Rollins has stayed true to its culture and traditions – earning its place as a legacy company in Atlanta.
