Last modified: Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Former Anthem CEO Lytle to visit Kelley School as Entrepreneur-in-Residence
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Jan. 25, 2006
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- L. Ben Lytle, chairman and chief executive officer of AXIA Health Management LLC and former chief executive officer and chairman of Anthem, will visit Indiana University's Kelley School of Business on Feb. 1 as its Distinguished Entrepreneur-in-Residence.
As part of his visit, Lytle will speak on the topic, "Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurial Start-Ups in the Health Care Industry, a Personal Perspective," at 10 a.m. in Room 1040 of the Godfrey Graduate and Education Center, 1275 E. 10th St.
The Kelley School's Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation hosts the entrepreneurs-in-residence program to inspire students and enable them to hear about the success and challenges of starting or expanding an emerging business. It enhances the instruction they receive through classes and work in other activities, such as the school's Entrepreneurial Management Academy.
Previous entrepreneurs-in-residence have included Scott Molander, co-founder and executive vice president of Hat World; Jack Stack, CEO of SRC Holdings; Gayle A. Crowell, senior information technology adviser at E. M. Warburg Pincus & Co.; and Herb Kelleher former CEO and chairman of the board of Southwest Airlines.
Lytle retired from Anthem in 1999 after leading the Indianapolis health insurer through initial rounds of acquisitions. He remained board chairman until May 2003, and during that time period he built, took public and sold Acordia Inc., which became the world's seventh largest insurance broker under his leadership. In 2004, Anthem acquired WellPoint Inc. Earlier this month Lytle retired as a director of the renamed company, WellPoint, to devote more time to AXIA, which is based in Tucson, Ariz.
AXIA takes a preventive approach to fighting the rising costs of healthcare. With its integrated suite of prevention programs, AXIA offers personalized solutions that help healthy individuals stay healthy and improve the health of those already affected by disease or disability. It does this through a high-touch delivery system of more than 10,000 fitness center locations, 4,000 AXIA-certified health improvement instructors and over 40,000 chiropractor and whole health network providers.
He began his career with Anthem in 1977, and for the next 26 years he held a number of positions, including chief operating officer and chairman. Under his leadership, the company grew from a single-state insurer with 1 million members in Indiana to one of the nation's most admired health benefits companies serving 12 million members in nine states. Lytle remained on the WellPoint board during a period when the company continued to grow and become the nation's leading health benefits company serving approximately 34 million members across the country. WellPoint is the largest publicly traded commercial health benefits company in terms of membership in the United States.
Lytle's innovative strategies were cited by Tom Peters in his book, Liberation Management: Necessary Disorganization for the Nanosecond Nineties. Lytle is an adjunct fellow and a member of the board of trustees of the American Enterprise Institute of Washington, D.C., and an executive-in-residence at the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona.
For more information, call 812-855-4248 or send an e-mail to suslan@indiana.edu.
