Evans to lead AIT again as CEO leaves company

Ron Thieme, who took over as president and CEO of AIT Laboratories during a management shakeup earlier this year, is leaving the company, the Indianapolis-based firm announced Monday morning.

Chairman and company founder Michael Evans will return to the positions of president and CEO, the company said. Evans stepped down from those positions in March to make way for Thieme, who had been vice president and chief information officer of AIT since 2007.

AIT said Monday in a prepared statement that Thieme was “leaving the company to pursue other challenges” and “would continue to work with AIT during a transition period.”

AIT, a forensics and clinical testing company, has experienced a number of management moves this year amid challenging economic conditions in its industry.

Last month, AIT hired Paula Conroy as chief financial officer. In March, the company announced that AIT’s director of information services solutions, William Cox, had been promoted to chief administrative officer, and its director of laboratory operations, Jason Bush, had been promoted to vice president of operations. In addition, Andrea Terrell was named chief scientific officer.

In January, Evans said AIT was looking to "restructure our business" and had eliminated an unspecified number of jobs.

The job cuts were a turnabout from 2010, when AIT said it planned to create as many as 160 jobs by 2014 and invest $74 million to equip a 90,000-square-foot building at Woodland Corporate Park as a new headquarters and lab. The Indiana Economic Development Corp. offered AIT up to $1.8 million in performance-based tax credits to help with the expansion.

Employment at AIT grew to nearly 500 people in recent years, but Evans said in January that conditions were worsening in the health care sector. It currently has about 450 employees, according to its website.

“AIT has seen reimbursement from government and private payers reduced throughout 2011, which has had a negative financial impact on the company,” he said at the time.

Evans, who founded AIT more than 22 years ago, donated $48 million to Marian University in 2010 to help it build its College of Osteopathic Medicine.