Perry Martin last spring was named president of Maryknoll School, replacing Mike Baker, who held Maryknoll's top post for 11 years.

Q. How have things gone since you arrived at Maryknoll?

A. It's been a really smooth transition. The leadership team here, the administration, the board members, the church, all have just been fantastic. From the top down, the bishop has just provided some great leadership in the diocese and it filters way down to the pastor and to the school.

Q. You came here from Oregon? Why?

A. It was in Eugene. I had seen about a year ago the possibility of Mike Baker retiring and a couple of things really interested me about Maryknoll. No. 1 was the diversity of the population, both of the island and of the school. No. 2, it's really hard to pass up an organization that has such a strategically minded board. Whenever you're the president of a school, you have to work closely with your board, and this board is so dynamic. They're by far the best I've ever seen and that really drew me here.

Q. Baker was the school's first lay president and so are you. Are there challenges to that?

A. When the schools were filled with religious years and years ago, what basically happened was many of the lay people sat back and allowed the religious to really take on that religious, spiritual leadership. Really, our faith calls for us to pretty much do the opposite, and that is the lay also needs to step up and provide that kind of leadership. So it was a natural occurrence. I think that for both the church and the school, that as religious slowly faded in their numbers, the lay was really asked to step up and take on that religious leadership. It's actually a blessing in disguise. It's a role that we play and we have to get better at it.

Q. Is it also important to have a business background when you run a private school?

A. I've seen different kinds of presidents with different kinds of business backgrounds. But you have to be pretty savvy with looking at budgets and looking at costs, especially in this kind of economic climate that we're in now. But more than anything else, a president really needs to look at trends, both economically and philosophically, to keep your school on the cutting edge.

Q. Did you attend Catholic schools?

A. Actually, I was a convert. I would say back in the early 1980s I converted to Catholicism during the first Gulf war. In that time in my life, I lived in Northern Saudi Arabia. It was a region that was being heavily bombed by Saddam Hussein, and my wife is a cradle Catholic so she was born and raised Catholic. She's a beacon in my life, faith-wise, so I've always gone to a Catholic church, but it wasn't until the Gulf war where really I was confirmed and became Catholic.

Q. Was that ever brought up when you pursued jobs at various Catholic schools?

A. It really hasn't. It's interesting how people look at conversion. Most people would look at conversion as a great thing simply because you're able to see both the Protestant side of faith and the Catholic side. I love my background because I have seen both.

Q. Do you foresee any changes while president?

A. I have two or three initiatives. Besides the day-to-day operations and goal settings, I'm one of those presidents that likes to have a couple of different things, broad-based goals that the entire school is directed to. One is strategic planning and strategic thinking. I'm reading a book by Michel Robert that outlines strategic thinking and how we move through a process to not get stuck. A lot of times thinking strategically we get stuck because we don't know what the future holds. The big change that I'm really pushing this year, because it's such a big issue, is resiliency within the school. It's based on Mike Milstein and Doris Annie Henry's book called "Leadership for Resilient Schools and Communities" and what they basically state in there is if you look at our world and our community, we're pushed into really negative information much of the time in our lives and therefore we start to think more in those terms. This particular training that we're going through is looking at our school and being able to deal with the difficult situations that come up in a resilient manner and problem-solving and challenges because schools are a living tissue. We change and because we change we take risks and resilient leaders find great avenues and results in those risk-taking activities.

Q. What's the status of Maryknoll's planned community center?

A. It's scheduled for sometime in April. It's a beautiful facility. We're deep in planning on how we're going to organize and manage the facility, who's going to be over there, how we're going to change how we look at P.E., how we're going to change the way we look at our weight room and physiology, and some of the things that we haven't had the opportunity to do. This coming spring we're going to have a home game! It's a gymnasium, NBA-size length-wise and it has two high school courts divided down the middle. So we can actually have two games going on at once. We've never had a place to do large assemblies, graduation, Masses. We've never had a spot for open houses for parents.

Q. You just got there, but have you given thought to how long you want to be there and what you hope to accomplish?

A. You have to be here six or seven years to begin to see some of the results of your efforts and some of the wide-spectrum change on philosophy of the school and direction. I would love to be here and stay connected with the school and this community for 10 or 15 years, however long I'm able to do it. At this point, with the vision of the board and the strong faculty, it's not too difficult for a president to be successful here. My wife is thrilled to be here. My two kids are at an age where they're in college, so they're getting what they need and get vacations in Hawai'i. It doesn't get any better than that.

Q. You belong to the Hawaii Association of Independent Schools?

A. I'm really happy to be part of this great HAIS group of independent school leaders. Robert Witt, who leads that, is just a wonderful man and he leads a group of independent school leaders and visionaries. A couple of meetings that I've attended, it's a wonderful association that really gives us, the presidents and the principals, staff development and things to think about. That's a strong organization.