Meet the Pink Team's Alejandra Malo

BY AMY LONG

PHOTOS BY CHRISTINE PETKOV

What do a commercial cleaning service, a short-term apartment rental and a nonprofit foundation that benefits children in Indiana and Mexico have in common?

They are all part of the vision of Alejandra Malo, founder, president and CEO of Pink Team Group, an umbrella organization that includes Pink Team Cleaning Services, Pink Team Rentals and Pink Team Foundation. A fourth entity, Pink Team Events, a special-events space and party-rental company, is in the works, with a roll-out planned for later this year.

Through the four divisions of Pink Team Group, Malo and her team strive to make a positive difference in the lives of individuals and communities – by offering flexible hours to busy working moms at Pink Team Cleaning Services, for example, or by providing clean, safe and inexpensive short-term housing through Pink Team Rentals.

“It’s Alejandra’s vision for making an impact in the community: seeing a need and trying to fill it,” says Alma Chavez, director of Pink Team Foundation.

In 2011, when Malo founded Pink Team Cleaning Services, she never imagined that her business would grow into a multi-faceted organization with 100 employees across branches in five states and Mexico. Malo had moved to Lafayette with her new husband only a year earlier. A native of Querétaro, Mexico, an industrial city of about two million people 150 miles northwest of Mexico City, Malo knew no one in her new hometown.

Casting around for a project that would keep her busy and that would also have a positive impact on her new community, Malo decided to clean homes for women undergoing cancer treatment, free of charge. Then, through word-of-mouth, Malo eventually took on paying clients and was able to hire a small staff; one of her first employees was a person with disabilities.

“So, my idea was, ‘If this doesn’t work, it won’t matter, because I will have already done something good,’ ” Malo recalls.

According to Malo, entrepreneurial spirit runs in her blood. “My father is an entrepreneur,” Malo says. “I have five brothers, all of them entrepreneurs, as well. So, it was kind of natural to think about something entrepreneurial.”

In addition, Malo has a strong business background. In college, Malo studied finance and accounting. Early in her career, she worked in business and accounting in the U.S., Mexico and Germany.

But she also was influenced by her traditional upbringing. Malo always figured that, after a few years in the workforce, she would follow in the footsteps of her mother, who stayed home to raise seven children. “I saw myself like my mom: staying at home, raising my kids. I didn’t have anything else on my mind.” Her housecleaning project, she says, was just supposed to be a fun side job until she and her husband started a family.

Malo was in her mid-30s and had been running the residential cleaning business for a couple of years when she found out that she was pregnant with her daughter, Isabella, now 11. “I thought, ‘I’m going to close this business and do my real job, which is being a mom,” Malo recalls. But on the exact same day, she also learned that she was approved to move into new office space on 26th Street. Also around that time, she landed her first big commercial cleaning client, Southwire, in Lafayette.

She called her dad with the news. “I remember telling him, ‘We got the factory!’ And I was crying. And

I’m like, ‘I can’t close right now. This is too good.’ ”

Through the years, Malo’s little family expanded with the addition of Alexander, now 9, while Pink Team Group also grew to include Pink Team Rentals, a portfolio of short-term rental properties.

Pink Team Cleaning services also has grown. Today, the company exclusively cleans corporate and commercial spaces for clients that include Wabash and Arconic in Lafayette. Pink Team also has opened branches in Illinois, Kentucky, Texas, Georgia and Malo’s hometown of Querétaro Mexico. While Pink Team is no longer a residential cleaning service, the company continues to offer free housecleaning services for cancer patients undergoing treatment.

That spirit of service and generosity undergirds everything that Malo takes on. She is dedicated not just to her clients, but also to her team of around 100 employees. After years of balancing the demands of work and family, Malo is especially sensitive to the needs of other women to seek purpose, to impact their community and to be available for their families. With a strong commitment to supporting minorities and mothers, Pink Team boasts a 96% retention rate year to year, in part through careful hiring, thorough training and flexible scheduling.

“We are very cautious on the hiring and very good at keeping the people that we have,” Malo says. “We do more marketing inside, with our employees [rather than to potential clients], trying to motivate them, trying to do events for them, and talking to them and really making them feel comfortable,” Malo says.

“Alejandra is extremely driven, and she has an infectious leadership style that makes you want to do good work for her,” says Mark Dolfini, a Lafayette business owner, consultant and strategist who met Malo through a networking group when Pink Team was in its infancy. They have been good friends ever since.

“Her whole sense of being is just about elevating others,” Dolfini adds.

In 2023, the Pink Team expanded again when Malo established Pink Team Foundation, a nonprofit organization that raises money – primarily through an annual fundraising gala – to benefit children’s charities in Lafayette and in Querétaro.

It was a move that was inspired, again, by her father, as well as by a deep feeling of gratitude and a desire to help those less fortunate. “I grew up in a family that was privileged, because I didn’t have any needs of any sort,” Malo says. “But I remem- ber seeing my father always helping in different ways. He never said anything; it was just part of his life.”

It is important for Malo to send money back to her hometown in Mexico, where there are few resources available to help homeless or traumatized children. In the two years since its inception, Pink Team Foundation has given more than $30,000 to a Querétaro orphanage called La Alegria de Los Niños.

To honor Malo’s adopted hometown and the hometown of her children, Pink Team Foundation also supports local nonprofit agencies. In 2024, the organization raised $13,000 for Heartford House, a child advocacy center in Lafayette, where children who have been the victims or witnesses to crimes can be interviewed in a safe, secure and private environment.

“This is Alejandra’s vision of being able to give back some of the success that she’s seen in her life,” says Chavez, the foundation’s director. “This was something that’s been in her heart for a while, and she finally felt it was the right time to share some of that success that she’s experiencing as an entrepreneur and to be able to give back.”

With her can-do attitude and unstoppable energy, it doesn’t look like Malo will be finished building Pink Team Group anytime soon. When an opportunity presents itself, whether it’s the chance to take on commercial cleaning clients for the first time, to expand into other states, or to launch a charitable foundation, Malo jumps right in.

“I think it, I do it. That is that. There is no process in between,” Malo says.

However the Pink Team umbrella expands, Dolfini is certain that the organization will continue to quietly transform lives. “The bigger impact to the community is employing people and bringing them into a cause, and not just a job. I think Alejandra and Pink Team do that very well.” ★