Daniel E. Witte is the eldest of six children. During much of his childhood he lived on the Navajo Reservation in northern Arizona, where his parents managed a trading post. When Dan reached the age of five, the distance to the nearest school precluded him from attending a public institution. Consequently, Dan was entirely home-educated until college, even after his family was forced to move from Arizona to Utah. For several winter months during the bleak recession of the early eighties, his family searched for employment and housing while living in a tent surrounded by mountain snow.

Dan studied Taoism and became heavily involved in the martial arts, basketball, and Boy Scouting. He earned his Eagle Scout and became Utah Scout of the Year after earning all 126 merit badges offered at the time (Eagle Scout requires 21 merit badges). Dan applied to Brigham Young University at age fifteen and used a newspaper article for photo identifi- cation so that he could take his standardized-admission test.

As a sixteen-year-old college freshman, Dan received an academic scholarship from B.Y.U. and additional scholarships from AMVETS, Adolph Coors Company, and the National Eagle Scout Association. He also won a political essay contest with three thousand student entries. Later Dan was awarded an Edwin S. Hinckley scholarship for public service and was chosen to be a Truman Scholar nominee. Dan graduated magna cum laude with a major in Resource Management (Urban Planning) and minors in Business and Recreation (emphasizing management of non-profit youth organizations). As valedictory runner-up in a college of 7,500 students, Dan was the top student from his department and had a grade-point average in the top 3% of the university. At age nineteen, he was B.Y.U.'s youngest graduate of 1992.

Dan took the Law School Admissions Test immediately after graduation and scored in the top 5%. He secured a full scholarship from B.Y.U.'s J. Reuben Clark Law School, which was held for two years so that he could complete an LDS mission in the United Kingdom.

Immediately upon his return, Dan began his joint law and business program. He graded onto Law Review, was selected as a member of the Moot Court Board of Advocates, and qualified as an alternate for the National Moot Court team. Dan earned the top grade in thirteen different law and business classes and received two of the nine law school awards given for top student scholarly legal papers of 1996-97. He became the only law student in school history to publish two comments in the B.Y.U. Law Review as a sole author. His first comment about parental rights was the most extensive student piece ever included in the B.Y.U. Law Review. The work has been cited in other scholarly writings and in court briefs.

Dan's commitment to home education forced him to divert considerable resources away from his graduate studies. After a protracted effort, he successfully compelled a local police chief and city prosecutor to retract improper charges they had filed against home educators. During the same period he rendered pro-bono assistance to another family of home educators who were contesting violations of the Fourth Amendment before a federal appeals court. Dan assisted in lobbying efforts and academic-freedom initiatives needed at the time to preserve parental rights and educational choice. He even ran for town council, losing by one vote to an incumbent twice his age.

Dan graduated magna cum laude with a Juris Doctor from the J. Reuben Clark Law School and a master degree with honors from the Marriott School of Management. He was the highest-placed joint-degree student in his class. While attending law school and studying for two bar exams, Dan worked for the U.S. Attorney's Office, a Utah Supreme Court justice, the Tenth and Seventh United States Circuit Courts of Appeals, two international firms in Asia and Latin America, and the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs. He has lived in Washington, D.C.; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Columbus, Ohio; Chicago, Illinois; Denver, Colorado; Salt Lake City, Utah; Palo Alto, California; and Seoul, Korea.

Dan became the first completely home-educated legal professional in modern history to be selected for a one-year clerkship with a United States Court of Appeals judge. After his clerkship, he became a general litigator in Silicon Valley for one of the three largest law firms in the world. He intensified his effort to start the Quaqua Society once he was admitted to legal practice in California.

In addition to his professional pursuits, Dan has an interest in micro-credit and developing nations. He visited Guatemala as part of a non-profit effort to provide free medical care and educational supplies to school children. Dan also enjoys studying the ideas of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Abraham Lincoln, four of our nation's home-educated Presidents. One of his favorite jurists is Justice Robert Jackson, a noted justice of the United States Supreme Court who was home-educated. Dan hopes the Quaqua Society will enhance opportunities for home-educators and the poor, thereby helping to facilitate a new generation of statesmen and problem-solvers from around the world.