Professor Maenette K.P. Ah Nee-Benham, a Kanaka Maoli scholar and teacher, is the inaugural Dean of Hawaiʻinuiākea
School of Hawaiian Knowledge, University of Hawaiʻi-Mānoa. Dr. Benham began her K-12 teaching career in 1978 and over
her 15-year teaching career, she has taught grades K-12 in California, Texas, and Hawaiʻi (Kaiser High School and
Kamehameha Schools). During this time she also served as a K-12 curriculum specialist (California), elementary school
administrator (Texas), and a district-level administrator (Washington).
Dr. Benham earned her doctoral degree from the University of Hawaiʻi-Mānoa in 1992, and in January of 1993 she joined
the College of Education faculty at Michigan State University. There she built a strong base of inquiry that centered
on (a) the nature of engaged and collective educational leadership across diverse communities and organizations (in
particular, indigenous communities); (b) the wisdom of knowing and praxis of social justice envisioned and enacted by
educational and community leaders (both formal and informal); (c) the meaning and value of systems knowledge in the work
of sustained community-based capacity building; and (d) the effects of educational and social policy on vulnerable
communities. She has worked extensively with Tribal Colleges and Universities coauthoring with Wayne Stein, The
Renaissance of American Indian Higher Education: Capturing the Dream (Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers), and was the lead
author of the White House Paper on the Tribal Colleges and Universities a Trust Responsibility (2004) submitted to the
U.S. President’s Advisory Board on Tribal Colleges and Universities, U.S. Department of Education.
Dr. Benham’s work on alternative frames of leadership and issues of education is nationally and internationally
respected. She has been an invited speaker and presenter at international conferences in Europe and South East Asia,
and the World Indigenous Peoples Conference on Education (Hawai‘i, Canada, and New Zealand). She is asked to speak on
educational issues at a variety of conferences from a focus on Biomedical Research, Cross-Disciplinary collaborations,
to a focus on Issues of Diversity. Additionally, she covers a range of topics from program planning and
assessment/evaluation, school change, leadership development (school-based and youth-based), building school-community
partnerships, and professional ethics (to name a few). She is the lead author of numerous articles on these topics, and
has published several books to include: Culture and Educational Policy in Hawai’i: The Silencing of Native Voices
(Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers), Let My Spirit Soar! The Narratives of Diverse Women in School Leadership (Corwin Press),
Indigenous Educational Models for Contemporary Practice: In Our Mother’s Voice, Volume I (Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers),
Indigenous Educational Models for Contemporary Practice: In Our Mother’s Voice, Volume II (Routledge), and Case Studies
for School Administrators: Managing Change in Education (Scarecrow Publishers). She is the past Editor (2002-2006) of
the American Educational Research Association’s leading educational journal, The American Educational Research Journal:
Section on Social and Institutional Analysis.
Dr. Benham has worked extensively with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation on youth, education, and community collective
leadership initiatives. She is currently working with the foundation as the lead P.I. for the Youth and Education
Community Foundations Leading for Children Cluster: Engaging Communities in Education (ECE) that seeks to engage and
build community capacity to advocate and build strong education pathways. She serves in a variety of capacities on the
WCRC/MAʻO Board of Directors, the Mānoa Heritage and Kualiʻi Foundation Board, and the Queen’s Health Systems and
Queen’s Medical Center’s Board of Trustees.
Her passion and commitment to healthy and sustainable learning environments for native/indigenous learners and their
families is grounded on two ʻolelo noʻeau that she has lived her life by, Kūlia i ka nu ‘u! and Ulu a'e ke welina a ke
aloha!