Dr. Maenette Ah Nee Benham (Moderator) is an Historic Hawai‘i Foundation Trustee and Chancellor of the University of Hawai‘i West O‘ahu. A kānaka maoli (Native Hawaiian) scholar and teacher, Benham previously served as the inaugural dean of the Hawaiʻinuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge at UH Mānoa. A Kamehameha Schools graduate, Benham began her teaching career in 1978 teaching grades K–12 in California, Texas and Hawaiʻi.  She earned her doctoral degree from UH Mānoa in 1992 and joined the College of Education faculty at Michigan State University in 1993. Among her notable accomplishments, Benham 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.

Dr. Kamanamaikalani Beamer is the Associate Professor, Hawai‘inuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge and Richardson School of Law, University of Hawai‘i Mānoa.  Previously, Beamer was the president and chief executive officer of The Kohala Center.  Beamer’s research on governance, land tenure, and Hawaiian resource management, as well as his prior work as the director of ‘Āina-Based Education at Kamehameha Schools, prepared him for his continuing service as a director of Stanford University’s First Nations Futures Institute, a resource management development program for indigenous leaders developed by Stanford, Kamehameha Schools, and Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu in New Zealand.  Beamer is currently in the second term of a four-year appointment on Hawai‘i’s Commission of Water Resource Management. In addition to numerous academic publications, in 2014 Beamer published No Mākou ka Mana: Liberating the Nation, which received multiple awards including the Samuel M. Kamakau Book of the Year Award from the Hawai‘i Book Publishing Association.

Ms. Melanie Ide is Chief Executive Officer of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum and an interpretive planner and registered architect. She has more than 27 years of experience in museum planning, design, and program development from her work as a principal of Ralph Appelbaum Associates (RAA), a multi-disciplinary, planning and design firm with active projects in over twenty countries, including work on the Bishop Museum’s Hawaiian Hall and Pacific Hall restoration projects from 2005-2013. Some of Ide’s past projects included directing the exhibition design for the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and the United States Capitol Visitor Center in Washington, D.C.; the International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina and the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas. Ide holds a BA in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley and has taught graduate and undergraduate courses at Parsons The New School for Design and been named a Cameron Visiting Architect at Middlebury College. Ide’s built work has garnered more than three dozen awards and has been featured in numerous publications.

Dr. Konrad Ng is the Executive Director of Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design in Honolulu, HI. Before joining Shangri La in 2016, Ng was the director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Asian Pacific American Center in Washington, DC where he led the production of exhibitions, public programs and digital initiatives about Asian Pacific American history, art and culture. Prior to his work at the Smithsonian, Konrad was a professor in the University of Hawaii’s Academy for Creative Media – a specialized undergraduate program in cinema and digital media. Before joining the University of Hawaii, Konrad was the first curator of film and video at the Honolulu Museum of Art where he programmed the museum’s Doris Duke Theater. Konrad earned his doctorate in political science from the University of Hawaii, a master’s degree in cultural, social and political thought from the University of Victoria and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and ethnic studies from McGill University. His research interests include the cultural politics of Asian Pacific American cinema and digital media, and how museums may be theories of activism and community engagement.