Dr. Benham earned her doctoral degree from the University of Hawai‘i-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 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 and education initiatives, and is currently working with the foundation as the national evaluator of the Kellogg Leadership for Community Change Initiative (2002-present) and the Youth and Education Community Foundations Leading for Children Cluster: Catalyzing Community Foundations Initiative that seeks to engage community foundations in developing youth and family grantmaking pathways. Her passion and commitment to healthy and sustainable learning environments for native/indigenous learners and their families is grounded on the motto she has lived her life by, “Kūlia i ka nu ‘u!”