Columnist - The Press Democrat

Kerry Benefield was reared and educated in Santa Rosa.  

After graduating from Santa Rosa High, Benefield played soccer at Cal where she was named to the Pac-10 first team All-Academic team her junior and senior seasons and was named co-captain her senior year. She graduated in 1995 with a degree in English.  

She earned her masters’ degree in journalism from City University in London. Benefield worked at newspapers in St. Helena, London, New Mexico and Louisiana.

In 2003 she moved home to Santa Rosa to work at The Press Democrat where she has covered politics, education and high school sports as the paper’s prep sports columnist. Benefield has three times been named an Associated Press Sports Editors top 10 columnist.

In 2018, Benefield was a member of the Press Democrat’s reporting team awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News for the newspaper’s coverage of the deadly wildfires of October 2017.  In May Benefield was named the paper's community columnist.