The president and CEO of the Alaska Native regional corporation stepped into a tough job in April of 2001.

"Ahtna was in trouble," Johns said. "I walked into a mess."

Trouble to the tune of $38 million in debt.

Johns was asked by the Ahtna board of directors to help right the ship. Prior to taking over at Ahtna, Johns was president of the non-profit Copper River Native Association for nine years.

Today, Ahtna's debt has been trimmed to less than $20 million.

Johns released three of the six presidents of the Ahtna subsidiaries. The company also instituted a hiring and salary freeze.

"Overall the plan was to stabilize the company, which we did," Johns said. "We stopped most of the bleeding, and we're phasing out the companies that were big losers to us. We've also cut our general expenses down."

There's also been some good news for Ahtna's 450 employees. Johns said it wasn't easy to order the hiring and salary freeze.

"Those were difficult when you ask employees to give 100 percent or 110 percent," he said. "But we're working back the other way now. We're setting up programs to benefit our workers."

Headquartered in Glennallen, Ahtna has been in operation since 1972 and has performed almost a billion dollars worth of contracts for major private and government clients, according to a corporate profile. Ahtna owns about 1.5 million acres conveyed in December 1998.

The corporation's efforts are for growth and diversification as well as management of its land, minerals and human resources.

"We're working on cutting expenses and moving away from hard dollar contracts and moving toward service contracts and 8(a) work," Johns said, referring to the program which gives minority-owned businesses a bidding prefernce on federal contracts. "We're looking for high margins on contracts we're getting into."

Ahtna also is trying to do some joint ventures, though "right now we're finding difficulty in bonding," Johns said.

Ahtna is paying about $200,000 a month in bank interest for its debt.

"It's really strenuous for us to deal that way," Johns said, noting that profits are swept up by bank debt.

Thus far in 2003, however, it has a profit of $700,000, and it also showed a profit in 2002, though that was offset by legal costs.

Johns would not detail specific reasons why Ahtna got into financial trouble, other than to say that the corporation has pending lawsuits against previous managers.

Ahtna had 1,074 original shareholders.

The long-range plan for the corporation, Johns said, "is to make a steady flow of operational profits so we can get out of debt, and set aside money to benefit shareholders through dividends, scholarships and education-training programs."

All told, Ahtna is working on more than 200 major contracts. Johns is proud of Ahtna's work at the Valdez terminal and the Alyeska pipeline. But, he adds, "I'm most proud of all the workers that stuck with us through the last two-and-a-half years."

The Ahtna region is located in southcentral Alaska and Ahtna, Inc. owns 609,472 acres within Wrangell-St. Elias National park and 25,000 acres within Denali National Park.

Ahtna's subsidiaries are: