Lisa Laube never misses a chance to go to the zoo.
A member of the Zoo Atlanta board of directors since 2019 and its newly elected chairperson, Laube often stops in for meetings and conferences — or to catch up with her favorite residents, the big cats (“I like cat personalities,” she says).
On a brisk February morning, Laube spotted a few happy sights: two rhinos sharing a drink, a trio of speckled pigeons twittering on a branch, the ring-tailed lemur keeping cozy by a heat lamp.
But her favorite sights were the humans — the wide-eyed girl watching her first elephant, the boy craning his neck toward the giraffes, the mom tickled pink by the flamingos.
“I think it’s important for people to be able to come see these animals and get a glimpse into a world they’ve never seen, or a country they’ve never heard of,” says Laube.
For Laube, it’s a convergence of passions.
“We run the zoo like a business,” says Zoo Atlanta CEO Raymond King, “but we have a very important mission of conservation, education, research. Board service takes somebody who has the business acumen but also a deep appreciation for our mission.”
Chairing a major board requires another, more intangible skill — a skill that served Laube well through a 35-year career, culminating in her retiring as president of Atlanta-based Floor & Decor in 2022.
“She’s very accomplished,” says King, “but she doesn’t have any ego about her at all. She doesn’t try to be the loudest voice in the room. But when she speaks, people listen.”
In her retail career, Laube also liked watching customers.
“To see something we spent a year and a half developing, somebody had to travel to another country five times to get right, the packaging went wrong three times, and it’s finally on the shelf… to see a customer walk up and say, ‘Oh my gosh, this is it,’ is so energizing.”
Laube’s affinity for “making things people love” emerged in a Terry marketing class called Personal Selling.
“The professor would hand us a pencil and say, ‘Sell this to me.’ And you’d have to think on your feet — what would make somebody want to buy this? I fell in love with that concept: What do people want? How do I get it for them?”
Enrolling in an executive training program at Rich’s out of college, Laube interviewed for an assistant buyer position at the department store.
Asked what she wanted to do with her career, she recalls making her aspirations clear.
“I remember almost hitting the desk and saying, ‘I want to run a company one day,’” she says.
Laube came by her ambition honestly. Her father was a successful banker, while her mother, without a college degree, entered the workforce during Laube’s childhood and became a vice president at a publishing company.
“Their dream for me and my siblings was to find what our passion was and to be happy,” she says. “They instilled in us that core value.”
Laube followed her passion for merchandising to Macy’s, which shortly closed its Atlanta division. Opportunities within the company beckoned in New York and San Francisco. Choosing the former, she and her husband, Billy (BBA ’77), packed up and headed north.
A series of roles at Linens ’N Things, Bath & Body Works and Party City took her through the ensuing years before an enticing opportunity arose back home.
Floor & Decor founder Vincent West (BBA ’77), who started the specialty tile and flooring retailer in 2000 and sold it two years later, was again running the company after a period of stagnation. He wanted to get things back on track and needed the people to make it happen.
One person, he knew, was a crucial piece of the puzzle. She was serious about sales. She led with humility. But when she spoke, people listened.
“We had 28 stores,” says Laube, who joined the company as executive vice president and chief merchandising officer in 2012. “When I started, there was no office for me. So Vincent moved all his things off the conference table, and we shared his.”
Hiring CFO Trevor Lang and Tom Taylor — a Home Depot veteran who had spent the last few years in private equity — as CEO, West assembled the team to take the company into its new era.
That new era reached new heights on April 27, 2017, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
Floor & Decor’s 28 stores were now 100, and sales were skyrocketing. The company’s leaders knew it was time to go public.
“It’s the single most fun thing I did in my career,” says Laube, describing a whirlwind of excitement and anticipation leading up to the IPO. “We traveled around to 58 investors, and all 58 wanted to buy in.”
Like investors, customers loved the revamped Floor & Decor. Under Laube’s leadership, stores had evolved from dim warehouses full of imposing stacks of flooring to clean, contemporary, aesthetically pleasing showrooms.
“We wanted to create an environment that didn’t exist” in the other big-box stores, Laube says, overlooking no detail from “the sound to the light to the product to the people.”
Certain practices set the company apart. Stores carried location-specific products targeted to their clientele. Design centers welcomed shoppers suddenly energized to tackle that long-delayed bathroom remodel. Store managers were not mere managers — they were “chief executive merchants.”
The stock was a massive success. The company initially planned to price it at around $16 per share. By the time of the offering, the number was $21. When the first trade came in, it had risen by 50%.
“Lisa brought fashion and innovation” to Floor & Decor, says Taylor. “She transformed the experience in the stores, and the customers appreciated it.”
The company did, too. In 2020, Laube was promoted to president.
During lockdown, the home improvement business boomed. Laube found herself second in command at a company valued at over $10 billion.
If she stayed, she knew she may one day become CEO. But the pandemic put certain things into perspective, and life was calling her elsewhere.
“Retiring was a huge decision,” she says. “It wasn’t one that I (made) easily. … I loved my job. But it was the right time for me to move to the next phase of my life while I can enjoy it.”
Laube enjoys lots of things about retirement.
Slower days at the lake. Marathon pickleball matches. Quality time with friends and family. Traveling — so much traveling — to the national parks, Europe, New Zealand and beyond.
But what she most cherishes is the chance to instill in others what her parents taught her and her siblings: to follow their passions, to be confident, to never give up.
With no children of their own, Lisa and Billy find meaning in supporting disadvantaged youth — “showing kids you can be anything you want to be,” she says. To this end, they contribute to many local charities, established marketing and study away scholarships at the Terry College and created a scholarship at St. Pius X Catholic High School in Atlanta.
“If we can give one person the opportunity to travel and see more, if we can give one person the opportunity to learn to read, that’s important,” she explains.
Back at the zoo, Laube reflects on the intersection of her life’s work.
“Some of the kids that come here have never thought about traveling outside of Atlanta,” she says. “To show them animals from around the world opens their minds to things they didn’t know were possible.
“Careers, like lives, are not always straight lines,” she continues. “(But) if you can be meaningful to somebody if something you do positively impacts somebody else … if you live with that kind of gratitude in your heart and that kind of optimism, you’ll do good things.”