Business View Magazine | April/May 2022

129 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 4 HAWA I I ASSOC I AT ION OF INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS just thought they’d get somebody in to do the paperwork and help organize the films coming in and out – things like that. But Robert had a much loftier vision for what the organization could do for the schools. He really built it from almost nothing.” Witt secured them a small office space close to Downtown Honolulu. He eventually hired a secretary and together they brainstormed ways to help others around the community. “Robert was the one who represented us to the media and supported us at legislature,” Bossert recalls. “The next two big steps came in the early ‘90s, when they realized that private schools were strengthen their cooperation. They met quarterly to talk about other things they could do and they realized they could get certain types of funding for private schools in Hawaii by incorporating. That’s why they formed the legal entity in 1969.” Over the next 20 years, those 15 schools went on to serve as the founding membership of HAIS, helping to inspire the structure, goals, and initiatives of the group. By the 1980s, the association had built up enough momentum to warrant hiring its own part-time Executive Director, the unduplicable Robert Witt. “He was a local teacher that some of the founders knew,” Bossert explains. “Originally, I think the schools