RTI toots its own horn to keep growth on track

RTI International is pulling out the stops to sustain the seam-busting growth the Research Triangle Park think tank has undergone in the past decade.

Buoyed by several large, federally funded research projects, RTI has added more than 900 jobs. Revenue more than tripled and is projected to exceed $700 million in the fiscal year that ends Tuesday.

But keeping up the pace could be challenging, especially as Congress focuses on an ailing economy and a new president sets priorities.

So RTI is using its 50th anniversary to embark on a $500,000, one-year marketing campaign largely aimed at pharmaceutical clients in addition to international and federal government agencies in the New York and Washington areas.

The celebration starts Oct. 1, but the marketing campaign kicked off with sponsorships on National Public Radio several weeks ago. An anniversary link goes live on RTI's Web site today. Print and online ads in Triangle publications will appear beginning Sunday in The News & Observer. Another set of online ads will be developed in the spring for The Washington Post and The New York Times.

RTI has never done anything like this before, said Chief Financial Officer Jim Gibson. "We've always kept a low profile."

But to sustain annual double-digit revenue growth, RTI must attract new government and corporate clients and contracts, he said.

Under the leadership of Victoria Franchetti-Haynes, who became chief executive in 1999, RTI has become the second largest nonprofit think tank in the United States, behind Battelle in Columbus, Ohio.

Established by Triangle academic, government and business leaders to anchor the area's new research park, RTI operates 15 offices and subsidiaries worldwide, and its employees work in about 40 countries.

Since 2000, three computer technology companies have spun out of RTI -- Ziptronix, Nextreme Thermal Solutions and SiXis -- and three companies became part of RTI. Palmer d'Angelo Consulting, a Canadian firm with expertise in health care pricing and reimbursement, was RTI's most recent acquisition last year.

On RTI's 180-acre campus in RTP, a face-lift projected to cost as much as $100 million is under way. Three of the oldest buildings are tagged for demolition. The first of two five-story office buildings is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

"The [funding] outlook is very positive for RTI," Gibson said. But anticipation of a new administration in the White House and a $700 billion bailout for Wall Street are raising concerns.

"There might be some funding delays," he said.

Most of the work that RTI's Triangle employees do serves federal government agencies. Funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services makes up about two-thirds of annual revenue, according to RTI's 2007 annual report.

RTI researchers supported NASA's space program, discovered a widely used cancer drug, tested the air in homes over the Love Canal dump site for chemical contamination, reduced the number of aviation accidents caused by wind shear and helped the South African government overhaul its apartheid-era education system. They have also been on the ground in Iraq to help establish democratically elected local governments.

In the past year, RTI has teamed with Duke University, UNC-Chapel Hill and N.C. State University to establish an energy research consortium whose issues include biofuels and climate change. The think tank also expanded its HIV/AIDS research with the addition of six scientists it attracted from the University of California at San Francisco.

Most of the work at RTI goes on without the Triangle noticing it. But not all.

Wendee Wechsberg -- an RTI scientist who studies behavior that increases the risk of HIV infection in women and teens -- has developed intervention programs by working with African-American women in North Carolina who are substance abusers. Since 2001, Wechsberg has adapted what she learned to at-risk women in South Africa and Russia. About half of the year, she travels to set up study sites. She is now finishing a report on South African teens, many of whom were raped as children, dropped out of school at 14 and became mothers and substance abusers by 17.

But her work in the Triangle continues. She is starting a study of local at-risk teens.

The ad campaign in the Triangle aims to tell local readers and listeners about the breadth and reach of its research and employees like Wechsberg.

People who are attracted to RTI's Web site through the ad campaign can find out about Wechsberg and her work.