Crane company exec has given RTI a lift.

• Author: Roush, Chris
• Position: PEOPLE

You couldn't blame Earl Johnson Jr. for sticking with the plan at RTI International. It generated $546.3 million in revenue for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, up 16.8% from the previous year. He's been on the nonprofit research organization's board since 1972 and its chairman--just its second--since 1993.

But Johnson, 75, has been pushing for change at the nonprofit, founded in 1958 as Research Triangle Institute--still its official name--to use expertise at Duke, N.C. State and UNC Chapel Hill. Though his job is mostly an advisory one, he has helped plan a $100 million overhaul of RTI's 180-acre Research Triangle Park campus. That's in addition to a $20 million, 78,000-square-foot lab and office building--named after him--that opened in September. Moreover, he wants RTI to alter its business mix and pick up more commercial work.

Of its fiscal 2006 revenue, more than 60%--$338.5 million--came from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Agency for International Development. That includes a four-year, $300 million contract to teach Iraqis to govern, including how to create school boards and utility de part-ments and how to tax residents. Just 9.1% of revenue came from commercial contracts. "You can find government work in the federal registry. The commercial work, you have to go out and sell." Clients include drug companies such as...